
Class _JXf 
Book._ 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



ENGmEEEma education 



ESSAYS FOR ENGLISH 

SELECTED AND EDITED 
BY 

RAY PALMER BAKER, M.A., Ph.D. 

Professor of English in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 



FIRST EDITION 



NEW YORK 

JOHN WILEY & SONS, Inc. 

Lokdon: chapman & HALL, Limited 
1919 



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Copyright, 1919, by 
RAY PALMER BAKER 




PRESS OF 
BRAUNWORTH ft CO. 
BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
BROOKLrN. N. V. 



m 30 19/9 

©CI.A529795 



PREFACE 



Though I can thank individually the authors 
and publishers whose generosity has made this col- 
lection possible, I can mention only a few of those 
who have contributed to it less directly. Of my 
colleagues in pure and applied science, Dr. A. T. 
Lincoln and Dr. M. A. Hunter have been notably 
helpful. Dr. Arthur L. Eno of the Department of 
English has criticized the manuscript from a literary 
point of view. To Miss Harriet R. Peck, Librarian 
of the Institute, who has made available the grow- 
ing hterature on the problems of engineering edu- 
cation, I am especially indebted. 

R. P. B. 



lU 



CONTENTS 



X>AGB 

Introduction vii 

THE ORIGINS OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION 

CHAPTER 

I. Evolution of the Scientific Investigator. Simon 

Newcomh 3 

II. The Relation of Pure Science to Engineering. Sir 

Joseph John Thomson 29 



THE TYPES OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION 

III. Two Kinds of Education for Engineers. John Butler 

Johnson 45 

IV. The Classical-Scientific versus the Purely Technical 

University Course. Howard McClenahan 65 



THE BASES OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION 

Language 

V. The Value of English to the Technical Man. John 

Lyle Harrington ■». 75 

VI. The Value of the Classics in Engineering Education. 

Charles Proteus Steinmetz ...••.. 93 

Mathematics 

VII. The Place of Mathematics in Engineering Practice. 

Sir William Henry White 103 

VIII. On the Relation of Mathematics to Engineering. 

Arthur Ranum 113 

V 



vi CONTENTS 



Physics 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IX. The Importance of Physics to the Engineer. 

Matthew Albert Hunter 125 

X. Modern Physics. Robert Andrews Millikan 134 

Chemistry 

XL The Relations Between Applied Chemistry and 

Engineering. John Baker Cannington Kershaw. . . 147 
XII. The Nature and Method of Chemistry. Alfred Senier 159 

Imagination 

XIII. The Imaginative Faculty in Engineering. Isham 

Randolph 169 

XIV. Engineering and Art. On the Value of the Scientific 

Use of the Imagination. Julian Chase Smallwood. 178 



INTRODUCTION 



As instructors in English will see by a glance at 
the table of contents, this volume has been planned 
for students of engineering. ^ I 

The avenues which it opens to those who are deal- 
ing with the fundamental processes of exposition are 
so evident that reference to them would be im- 
pertinent. It may not be out of place, however, to 
direct attention towards three features of the text 
which are- largely original; in character, authorita- 
tiveness, and arrangement, it represents distinct 
departures from time-honored methods of selection. 

The articles, written within the last decade, are 
of immediate interest. Though students ought to 
be familiar with the earlier phases of the debate 
between the champions of utility and culture in 
education, and with the methods of such formidable 
antagonists as Huxley and Arnold, the specific issues 
over which they clashed are apparently settled, and 
not unnaturally are regarded by freshmen and 
sophomores as remote and unimportant. Other 
issues have now arisen. One of the most valuable 
features of this volume is its indication that experi- 
ence and authority point towards a decision which 

vii 



vm INTRODUCTION 



few undergraduates expect. As a result, it stimulates, 
in a novel manner, the clash of opinion which is the 
strongest incentive to thought. 

In another way also the collection is unique; for 
in no instance are the writers professional men of 
letters. In every case they may claim for their 
views the sanction of success — even distinction — in 
pure or applied science. Consequently their obser- 
vations are certain to appeal to undergraduates — 
hero-worshippers at heart — ^who are inclined to test 
experience by deeds instead of books. What the 
Chief Critic of the Nineteenth Century says regard- 
ing the classics means little to freshmen or sopho- 
mores who find their highest delight in the antennae 
of a wireless station; what the Consulting Engineer 
to the General Electric Company says regarding 
them means much. 

Moreover, the arrangement of the articles — recent 
and authoritative as they are — is such that they 
present an ideal of engineering education which can- 
not be found elsewhere. Every student will be 
attracted by the goal towards which the argument 
moves. 

What these three departures mean to instructors 
in English cannot be exaggerated. They mean that 
students will be eager to think and to express their 
ideas as effectively as possible; that they will come 
to accept a point of view with which they may 
have had little sympathy in the past; that they will 
be able to regard the process of education as a 



INTRODUCTION IX 



whole, and so fit into their proper niches the ele- 
ments essential to success. With the place of lan- 
guage and literature thus established, they will 
approach them with renewed zest and determination. 

Since the volume will find its chief use in elemen- 
tary courses in exposition, where accuracy is essen- 
tial, effort has been made to establish a satisfactory 
text. In one instance the author's revised copy 
has been selected for publication. Another essay 
is a composite drawn from two different sources. 
As several articles are based on reports which 
were never submitted for verification, errors in the 
originals are not uncommon. These mistakes have 
been corrected. Where parallel passages occur, 
the most acceptable readings have been retained. 
Moreover, to avoid confusion on the part of students, 
usage has been standardized throughout. To adapt 
the volume to their needs, and to keep it within 
reasonable bounds, all the articles except those by 
Professor Ranum and Professor Hunter have been 
materially abridged. Though much has thus been 
omitted, nothing except a few connectives has 
been added; and the thought remains essentially 
the same. 



THE ORIGINS OF ENGINEERING 
EDUCATION 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC 
INVESTIGATOR 

SIMON NEWCOMB 

[Few men have been better qualified than Simon Newcomb 
(183 5-1909) to interpret the aims of science. No other American 
at any rate has achieved such distinction in research and written 
with such lucidity regarding his achievements. So various 
were Newcomb's interests, and so numerous are his books 
and articles, that only the most significant can be considered 
here. Educated at his father's school in Nova Scotia, and at 
Harvard University, he soon found that his interests lay in 
mathematics and astronomy; and in due time he became Senior 
Professor in the Navy of the United States and Professor of 
Mathematics at the Johns Hopkins University. Of his success 
in investigation the best criteria are the honors conferred upon 
him in recognition of his discoveries: degrees in many of the 
greatest universities; decorations by foreign governments; 
medals by various associations, and positions of trust in the 
learned societies of America. He was, for instance, the first 
native American after Franklin to be elected an Associate of the 
Institute of France. Among medals which he received were the 
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Copley 
Medal of the Royal Society. At different times he was presi- 
dent of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, the Society for Physical Research, the Astronomical 
and Astrophysical Society of America, and the American 
Mathematical Society. While President of the International 
Congress of Arts and Sciences in 1904 he delivered the following 
address, which is reprinted, by permission of the Smithsonian 



SIMON NEWCOMB 



Institution, from the Report for 1904. In addition to articles 
demanded by his editorship of the American Journal of Mathe- 
matics and the Nautical Almanac he is the author of three 
hundred monographs on mathematical and astronomical sub- 
jects. Most of these are to be found in the Astronomical 
Papers. Many others, more popular in treatment, have been 
made easily accessible, and have done much to stimulate interest 
in natural phenomena. Nor did Newcomb forget the world of 
Man in the world of Nature. In several books he set forth his 
theories of political economy, and in a novel and a volume of 
reminiscences he epitomized what he had learned of men and 
affairs. Few writers have been better qualified to trace the 
progress of science from the dawn of civiHzation to the end of 
the nineteenth century.] 

As we look at the assemblage gathered in this 
hall, comprising so many names of widest renown 
in every branch of learning — ^we might almost say 
in every field of human endeavor — the first inquiry 
suggested must be after the object of our meeting. 
The answer is that our purpose corresponds to the 
eminence of the assemblage. We aim at nothing 
less than a survey of the realm of knowledge as 
comprehensive as is permitted by the limitations 
of time and space. The organizers of our Congress 
have honored me with the charge of presenting such 
preliminary view of its field as may make clear 
the spirit of our undertaking. 

Certain tendencies characteristic of the science of 
our day clearly suggest the direction of our thoughts 
most appropriate to the occasion. Among the 
strongest of these is one toward laying greater stress 
on the beginning of things, and regarding a knowledge 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 5 

of the laws of development of any object of study 
as necessary to the understanding of its present 
form. It may be conceded that the principle here 
involved is as applicable in the broad field before us 
as in a special research into the properties of the 
minutest organism. It therefore seems meet that 
we should begin by inquiring as to what agency has 
brought about the remarkable development of 
science to which the world of to-day bears witness. 
This view is recognized in the plan of our proceedings 
by providing for each great department of knowledge 
a review of its progress during the century that has 
elapsed since the great event commemorated by the 
scenes outside this hall. But such reviews do not 
make up the general survey of science at large 
which is necessary to the development of our theme, 
and which must include the action of causes that had 
their origin long before our time. The movement 
which culminated in making the nineteenth century 
ever memorable in history is the outcome of a 
long series of causes, acting through many centuries, 
which are worthy of special attention on such an 
occasion as this. In setting them forth we should 
avoid laying stress on those visible manifestations 
which, striking the eye of every beholder, are in 
no danger of being overlooked, and search rather 
for those agencies whose activities underlie the whole 
visible scene, but which are liable to be blotted out 
of sight by the very brilliancy of the results to which 
they have given rise. It is easy to draw attention 



6 SIMON NEWCOMB 



to the wonderful qualities of the oak; but, because 
of that very fact, it may be needful to point out that 
the real wonder lies concealed in the acorn from which 
it grew. 

Our inquiry into the logical order of the causes 
which have made our civilization what it is to-day 
will be facilitated by bringing to mind certain ele- 
mentary considerations — ideas so familiar that set- 
ting them forth may seem like citing a body of 
truisms — and yet so frequently overlooked, not only 
individually, but in their relation to each other, 
that the conclusion to which they lead may be lost 
to sight. One of these propositions is that psychical 
rather than material causes are those which we should 
regard as fundamental in directing the development 
of the social organism. The human intellect is the 
really active agent in every branch of endeavor — 
the frimum mobile of civilization — and all those 
material manifestations to which our attention is so 
often directed are to be regarded as secondary to 
this first agency. If it be true that " in the world 
is nothing great but man; in man is nothing great 
but mind," then should the keynote of our discourse 
be the recognition of this first and greatest of 
powers. 

Another well-known fact is that those applica- 
tions of the forces of Nature to the promotion of 
human welfare which have made our age what it is 
are of such comparatively recent origin that we need 
go back only a single century to antedate their 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 



most important features, and scarcely more than 
four centuries to find their beginning. It follows 
that the subject of our inquiry should be the com- 
mencement, not many centuries ago, of a certain 
new form of intellectual activity. 

With this point of view in mind, our next inquiry 
will be into the nature of that activity and its rela- 
tion to the stages of progress which preceded and 
followed its beginning. The superficial observer, 
who sees the oak but forgets the acorn, might tell us 
that the special qualities which have brought out 
such great results are expert scientific knowledge 
and rare ingenuity, directed to the application of the 
powers of steam and electricity. From this point 
of view the great inventors and the great captains 
of industry were the first agents in bringing about 
the modern era. But the more careful inquirer will 
see that the work of these men was possible only 
through a knowledge of the laws of Nature which 
had been gained by men whose work took prece- 
dence of theirs in logical order, and that success in 
invention has been measured by completeness of 
such knowledge. While giving all due honor to the 
great inventors, let us remember that the first 
place is that of the great investigators, whose force- 
ful intellects opened the way to secrets previously 
hidden from men. Let it be an honor and not a 
reproach to these men that they were not actuated 
by the love of gain, and did not keep utilitarian 
ends in view in the pursuit of their researches. If 



8 SIMON NEWCOMB 



it seems that in neglecting such ends they were 
leaving undone the most important part of their 
work, let us remember that Nature turns a forbid- 
ding face to those who pay her court with the hope 
of gain, and is responsive only to those suitors 
whose love for her is pure and undefiled. The 
true man of science has no such expression in his 
vocabulary as " useful knowledge." His domain 
is as wide as Nature itself, and he best fulfills his 
mission when he leaves to others the task of applying 
the knowledge he gives to the world. 

We have here the explanation of the well-known 
fact that the functions of the investigator of the 
laws of Nature and of the inventor who applies these 
laws to utilitarian purposes are rarely united in 
the same person. If the one conspicuous exception 
which the past century presents to this rule is not 
unique, we should probably have to go back to Watt 
to find another. 

From this point of view it is clear that the primary 
agent in the movement which has elevated man to 
the masterful position he now occupies is the scien- 
tific investigator. He it is whose work has deprived 
plague and pestilence of their terrors, alleviated 
human suffering, girdled the earth with the electric 
wire, bound the continent with the iron way, and 
made neighbors of the most distant nations. As the 
first agent which has made possible this meeting 
of his representatives, let his evolution be this day 
our worthy theme. As we follow the evolution of 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 9 

an organism by studying the stages of its growth, so 
we have to show how the work of the scientific 
investigator is related to the ineffectual efforts of 
his predecessors. 

In our time we think of the process of develop- 
ment in Nature as one going continuously forward 
through the combination of the opposite processes 
of evolution and dissolution. The tendency of our 
thought has been in the direction of banishing 
cataclysms to the theological limbo, and viewing 
Nature as a sleepless plodder, endowed with infinite 
patience, waiting through long ages for results. I 
do not contest the truth of the principle of contin- 
uity on which this view is based. But it fails to make 
known to us the whole truth. The building of a ship 
from the time that her keel is laid until she is making 
her way across the ocean is a slow and gradual prog- 
ress; yet there is a cataclysmic epoch opening up a 
new era in her history. It is the moment when, 
after lying for months or years a dead, inert, immov- 
able mass, she is suddenly endowed with the power of 
motion, and, as if imbued with life, glides into the 
stream, eager to begin the career for which she 
was designed. 

I think it is thus in the development of humanity. 
Long ages may pass during which a race, to all 
external observation, appears to be making no real 
progress. Additions may be made to learning, and 
the records of history may constantly grow, but 
there is nothing in its sphere of thought or in the 



10 SIMON NEWCOMB 



features of its life that can be called essentially 
new. Yet Nature may have been all along slowly 
working in a way which evades our scrutiny until 
the result of her operations suddenly appears in a 
new and revolutionary movement, carrying the 
race to a higher plane of civilization. 

It is not difficult to point out such epochs in human 
progress. The greatest of all, because it was the 
first, is one of which we find no record either in 
written or geological history. It was the epoch 
when our progenitors first took conscious thought 
of the morrow, first used the crude weapons which 
Nature had placed within their reach to kill their 
prey, first built a fire to warm their bodies and cook 
their food. I love to fancy that there was some one 
first man, the Adam of evolution, who did all this, 
and who used the power thus acquired to show his 
fellows how they might profit by his example. 
When the members of the tribe or community which 
he gathered around him began to conceive of life 
as a whole — to include yesterday, to-day, and to- 
morrow in the same mental grasp — to think how they 
might apply the gifts of Nature to their own uses, 
a movement was begun which should ultimately 
lead to civilization. 

Long indeed must have been the ages required 
for the development of this rudest primitive com- 
munity into the civilization revealed to us by the 
most ancient tablets of Egypt and Assyria. After 
spoken language was developed, and after the rude 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 11 

representation of ideas by visible marks drawn to 
resemble them had long been practiced, some 
Cadmus must have invented an alphabet. When the 
use of written language was thus introduced, the 
word of command ceased to be confined to the range 
of the human voice, and it became possible for 
master minds to extend their influence as far as a 
written message could be carried. Then were 
communities gathered into provinces, provinces 
into kingdoms, kingdoms into the great empires 
of antiquity. Then arose a stage of civilization 
which we find pictured in the most ancient records — 
a stage in which men were governed by laws that 
were perhaps as wisely adapted to their conditions 
as our laws are to ours — in which the phenomena 
of Nature were rudely observed, and striking occur- 
rences in the earth or in the heavens recorded in 
the annals of the nation. 

Vast was the progress of knowledge during the 
interval between these empires and the century in 
which modern science began. Yet, if I am right in 
making a distinction between the slow and regular 
steps of progress, each growing naturally out of that 
which preceded it, and the entrance of the mind 
at some fairly definite epoch into an entirely new 
sphere of activity, it would appear that there was 
only one such epoch during the entire interval. 
This was when abstract geometrical reasoning 
commenced, and astronomical observations aiming 
at precision were recorded, compared, and discussed. 



12 SIMON NEWCOMB 



Closely associated with it must have been the con- 
struction of the forms of logic. The radical differ- 
ence between the demonstration of a theorem of 
geometry and the reasoning of everyday life which 
the masses of men must have practiced from the 
beginning, and which few even to-day ever get 
beyond, is so evident at a glance that I need not 
dwell upon it. The principal feature of this advance 
is that, by one of those antinomies of the human 
intellect of which examples are not wanting even 
in our time, the development of abstract ideas pre- 
ceded the concrete knowledge of natural phenomena. 
When we reflect that in the geometry of Euclid the 
science of space was brought to such logical per- 
fection that even to-day its teachers are not agreed 
as to the practicabiHty of any great improvement 
upon It, we cannot avoid the feeling that a very 
slight change in the direction of the intellectual 
activity of the Greeks would have led to the begin- 
ning of natural science. But it would seem that the 
very purity and perfection which were aimed at in 
their system of geometry stood in the way of any 
extension or application of its methods and spirit 
to the field of Nature. One example of this is worthy 
of attention. In modern teaching the idea of mag- 
nitude as generated by motion is freely introduced. 
A line is described by a moving point; a plane by a 
moving line; a soHd by a moving plane. It may, 
at first sight, seem singular that this conception 
finds no place in the Euclidean system. But we 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 13 

^^■^— ^— — ^— — ■^— ^^ — ^i^— ^— i^^^— ^— .—— 1— 

may regard the omission as a mark of logical purity 
and rigor. Had the real or supposed advantages of 
introducing motion into geometrical conceptions 
been suggested to Euclid, we may suppose him to 
have replied that the theorems of space are inde- 
pendent of time; that the idea of motion neces- 
sarily implies time, and that, in consequence, to 
avail ourselves of it v^ould be to introduce an ex- 
traneous element into geometry. 

It is quite possible that the contempt of the ancient 
philosophers for the practical application of their 
science, which has continued in some form to our 
own time, and which is not altogether unwholesome, 
was a powerful factor in the same direction. The 
result was that, in keeping geometry pure from 
ideas which did not belong to it, it failed to form 
what might otherwise have been the basis of physical 
science. Its founders missed the discovery that 
methods similar to those of geometric demonstra- 
tion can be extended into other and wider fields 
than that of space. Thus, not only the develop- 
ment of applied geometry, but the reduction of other 
conceptions to a rigorous mathematical form was 
indefinitely postponed. 

Astronomy is necessarily a science of observation 
pure and simple, in which experiment can have no 
place except as an auxiliary. The vague accounts 
of striking celestial phenomena handed down by the 
priests and astrologers of antiquity were followed 
in the time of the Greeks by observations having, 



14 " SIMON NEWCOMB 

in form at least, a rude approach to precision, 
though nothing Hke the degree of precision that the 
astronomer of to-day would reach with the naked 
eye, aided by such instruments as he could fashion 
from the tools at the command of the ancients. 

The rude observations commenced by the Baby- 
lonians were continued with gradually improving 
instruments — first by the Greeks and afterwards by 
the Arabs — but the results failed to afford any 
insight into the true relation of the earth to the heav- 
ens. What was most remarkable in this failure is 
that, to take a first step forward which would have 
led on to success, no more was necessary than a 
course of abstract thinking vastly easier than that 
required for working out the problems of geometry. 
That space is infinite is an unexpressed axiom 
tactitly assumed by Euclid and his successors. 
If this were combined with the most elementary 
consideration of the properties of the triangle, it 
would be seen that a body of any given size could be 
placed at such a distance in space as to appear to 
us like a point. Hence, a body as large as our 
earth, which was known to be a globe from the time 
that the ancient Phoenicians navigated the Mediter- 
ranean, if placed in the heavens at a sufficient dis- 
tance, would look like a star. The obvious con- 
clusion that the stars might be bodies Hke our 
globe, shining either by their own light or by that 
of the sun, would have been a first step to the under- 
Standing of the true system of the world. 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 15 

There is historical evidence that this deduction 
did not wholly escape the Greek thinkers. It is 
true that the critical student will assign little weight 
to the current belief that the vague theory of Pytha- 
goras — that fire was at the center of all things — 
implies a conception of the heliocentric theory of 
the solar system. But the testimony of Archimedes, 
confused though it is in form, leaves no serious doubt 
that Aristarchus of Samos not only propounded the 
view that the earth revolves both on its own axis 
and around the sun, but that he correctly removed 
the great stumbling-block in the way of this theory 
by adding that the distance of the fixed stars was 
infinitely greater than the dimensions of the earth's 
orbit. Even the world of philosophy was not yet 
ready for this conception, and, so far from seeing 
the reasonableness of the explanation, we find 
Ptolemy arguing against the rotation of the 
earth on grounds which careful observations of the 
phenomena around him would have shown to be 
ill-founded. 

Physical science, if we may apply that term to 
an uncoordinated body of facts, was successfully 
cultivated from the earliest times. Something must 
have been known of the properties of metals, and the 
art of extracting them from their ores must have 
been practiced from the time that coins and medals 
were first stamped. The properties of the most 
common compounds were discovered by alchemists 
in their vain search for the philosopher's stone, but 



16 SIMON NEWCOMB 

no actual progress worthy of the name rewarded the 
practitioners of the black art. 

Perhaps the first approach to a correct method was 
that of Archimedes, who by much thinking worked 
out the law of the lever, reached the conception of 
the center of gravity, and demonstrated the first 
principles of hydrostatics. It is remarkable that he 
did not extend his researches into the phenomena of 
motion, whether spontaneous or produced by force. 
The stationary condition of the human intellect is 
most strikingly illustrated by the fact that not until 
the time of Leonardo da Vinci was any substantial 
advance made on his discovery. To sum up in 
one sentence the most characteristic feature of 
ancient and mediaeval science, we see a notable 
contrast between the precision of thought implied 
in the construction and demonstration of geometrical 
theorems and the vague indefinite character of the 
ideas of natural phenomena, a contrast which did 
not disappear until the foundations of modern 
science began to be laid. 

We should miss the most essential point of the 
difference between mediaeval and modern learn- 
ing if we looked upon it as mainly a difference 
either in the precision or the amount of knowledge. 
The development of both of these qualities would, 
under any circumstances, have been slow and 
gradual, but sure. We can hardly suppose that any 
one generation, or even any one century, would have 
seen the complete substitution of exact for inexact 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 17 

ideas. Slowness of growth is as inevitable in the 
case of knowledge as in that of a growing organism. 
The most essential point of difference is one of those 
seemingly slight ones, the importance of which we 
are too apt to overlook. It was like the drop of 
blood in the wrong place, which someone has told 
us makes all the difference between a philosopher and 
a maniac. It was all the difference between a 
living tree and a dead one, between an inert mass and 
a growing organism. The transition of knowledge 
from the dead to the living form must, in any com- 
plete review of the subject, be looked upon as the 
really great event of modern times. Before this 
event the intellect was bound down by a scholas- 
ticism which regarded knowledge as a rounded whole, 
the parts of which were written in books and carried 
in the minds of learned men. The student was 
taught from the beginning of his work to look 
upon authority as the foundation of his beliefs. 
The older the authority, the greater the weight 
it carried. So effective was this teaching that it 
seems never to have occurred to individual men 
that they had all the opportunities of discovering 
truth ever enjoyed by Aristotle, with the added 
advantage of all his knowledge to begin with. Ad- 
vanced as was the development of formal logic, 
the practical logic was wanting which could 
see that the last of a series of authorities, every 
one of which rested on those which preceded 
it, could never form a surer foundation for any 



18 SIMON NEWCOMB 



doctrine than that suppHed by its original pro- 
pounder. 

The result of this view of knowledge was that, 
although during the fifteen centuries following the 
death of the geometer of Syracuse great universities 
were founded at which generations of professors 
expounded all the learning of their time, neither 
professor nor student ever suspected what latent 
possibilities for good were concealed in the most 
familiar operations of Nature. Everyone felt the 
wind blow, saw water boil, and heard the thunder 
crash, but never thought of investigating the forces 
here at play. Up to the middle of the fifteenth 
century the most acute observer could scarcely have 
seen the dawn of a new era. 

In view of this state of things, it must be regarded 
as one of the most remarkable facts in evolutionary 
history that four or five men, whose mental consti- 
tution was either typical of the new order of things, 
or who were powerful agents in bringing it about, 
were all born during the fifteenth century, four of 
them at least at so nearly the same time as to be 
contemporaries. 

Leonardo da Vinci, whose artistic genius has 
charmed succeeding generations, was also the first 
practical engineer of his time, and the first man 
after Archimedes to make a substantial advance 
in developing the laws of motion. That the 
world was not prepared to make use of his 
scientific discoveries does not detract from the 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 19 

significance which must attach to the period of his 
birth. 

Shortly after him was born the great navigator 
whose bold spirit was to make known a new world, 
thus giving to commercial enterprise that impetus 
which was so powerful an agent in bringing about a 
revolution in the thoughts of men. 

The birth of Columbus was soon followed by that 
of Copernicus, the first after Aristarchus to demon- 
strate the true system of the world. In him more 
than in any of his contemporaries do we see the 
struggle betwieen the old forms of thought and the 
new. It seems almost pathetic, and is certainly 
most suggestive of the general view of knowledge 
taken at this time that, instead of claiming credit 
for bringing to light great truths before unknown, 
he made a labored attempt to show that after all 
there was nothing really new in his system, which he 
claimed to date from Pythagoras and Philolaus. 
In this connection it is curious that he makes no 
mention of Aristarchus, who, I think, will be regarded 
by conservative historians as his only demonstrated 
predecessor. To the hold of the older ideas upon 
his mind we must attribute the fact that in con- 
structing his system he took great pains to make as 
little change as possible in ancient conceptions. 

Luther, the greatest thought stirrer of them all, 
practically of the same generation with Copernicus, 
Leonardo, and Columbus, does not come in as a 
scientific investigator, but as the great loosener of 



20 SBION NEWCOMB 



chains which had so fettered the intellect of men 
that they dared not think otherwise than as the 
authorities thought. 

Almost coeval with the advent of these intellects 
was the invention of printing with movable type. 
Gutenberg was born during the first decade of the 
century', and his associates and others credited with 
the invention not many years afterwards. If we 
accept the principle on which I am basing my argu- 
ment, that we should assign the first place to the 
birth of those psychic agencies which started men 
on new lines of thought, then surely was the fifteenth 
the wonderful century. 

Let us not forget that, in assigning the actors then 
born to their places, we are not narrating history-, 
but studying a special phase of evolution. It matters 
not for us that no university invited Leonardo 
to its halls, and that his science was valued by his 
contemporaries only as an adjunct to the art of engi- 
neering. The great fact still is that he was the 
first of mankind to propound laws of motion. It is 
not for anything in Luther's doctrines that he finds 
a place in our scheme. No matter for us whether 
they were sound or not. What he did toward the 
evolution of the scientific investigator was to show 
by his example that a man might question the 
best established and most venerable authority 
and still live, still preserve his intellectual integrity, 
still command a hearing from nations and their 
rulers. It matters not for us whether Columbus 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 21 

ever knew that he had discovered a new continent. 
His work was to teach that neither hydra, chimera, 
nor abyss — neither divine injunction nor infernal 
machination — was in the way of men visiting every 
part of the globe, and that the problem of conquer- 
ing the world reduced itself to one of sails and rigging, 
hull and compass. The better part of Copernicus 
was to direct man to a point of view whence he should 
see that the heavens were of like matter with the 
earth. All this done, the acorn was planted from 
which the oak of our civilization should spring. 
The mad quest for gold which followed the discovery 
of Columbus, the questionings which absorbed the 
attention of the learned, the indignation excited by 
the seeming vagaries of a Paracelsus, the fear and 
trembling lest the strange doctrine of Copernicus 
should undermine the faith of centuries, were all 
helps to the germination of the seed — stimuli to 
thought which urged it on to explore the new fields 
opened up to its occupation. This given, all that 
has since followed came out in regular order of 
development, and need be here considered only in 
those phases having a special relation to the purpose 
of our present meeting. 

So slow was the growth at first that the sixteenth 
century may scarcely have recognized the inaugura- 
tion of a new era. Torricelli and Benedetti were 
of the third generation after Leonardo, and Galileo, 
the first to make a substantial advance upon his 
theory, was born more than a century after him. 



22 SEVION NEWCOMB 

In a generation there appeared only two or three 
men who, working alone, could make real progress 
in discovery, and even these could do little in leaven- 
ing the minds of their fellowmen with the new 
ideas. 

Up to the middle of the seventeenth century an 
agent which all experience since that time shows to 
be necessary to the most productive intellectual 
activity was wanting. This was the attrition of 
like minds, making suggestions to each other, criti- 
cising, comparing, and reasoning. This element was 
introduced by the organization of the Royal Society 
of London and the Academy of Sciences of Paris. 

The members of these two bodies seem Hke in- 
genious youth suddenly thrown into a new world 
of interesting objects, the purposes and relations of 
which they had to discover. The novelty of the 
situation is strikingly shown in the questions which 
occupied the minds of the incipient investigators. 
One natural result of British maritime enterprise 
was that the aspirations of the Fellows of the Royal 
Society were not confined to any continent or hemi- 
sphere. Inquiries were sent all the way to Batavia 
to know " whether there be a hill in Sumatra 
which burneth continually and a fountain which 
runneth pure balsam." The astronomical precision 
with which it seemed possible that physiological 
operations might go on was evinced by the inquiry 
whether the Indians can so prepare the stupefying 
herb Datura that "they make it lie several days, 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 23 

months, years, according as they will, in a man's 
body without doing him any harm, and at the end 
kill him without missing an hour's time." Of 
this continent one of the inquiries was whether there 
be a tree in Mexico that yields water, wine, vinegar, 
milk, honey, wax, thread, and needles. 

Among the problems before the Paris Academy 
of Sciences those of physiology and biology took a 
prominent place. The distillation of compounds 
had long been practiced, and the fact that the more 
spirituous elements of certain substances were thus 
separated naturally led to the question whether the 
essential essences of life might not be discoverable 
in the same way. In order that all might participate 
in the experiments, they were conducted in open 
session of the Academy, thus guarding against the 
danger of any one member obtaining for his exclu- 
sive personal use a possible elixir of life. A wide 
range of the animal and vegetable kingdom, in- 
cluding cats, dogs, and birds of various species, 
was thus analyzed. The practice of dissection was 
introduced on a large scale. That of the cadaver 
of an elephant occupied several sessions, and was of 
such interest that the monarch himself was a spec- 
tator. 

To the same epoch with the formation and first 
work of these two bodies belongs the invention of a 
mathematical method which in its importance to 
the advance of exact science may be classed with the 
invention of the alphabet in its relation to the prog- 



24 SIMON NEWCOMB 



ress of society at large. The use of algebraic symbols 
to represent quantities had its origin before the 
commencement of the new era, and gradually grew 
into a highly developed form during the first two 
centuries of that era. But this method could rep- 
resent quantities only as fixed. It is true that the 
elasticity inherent in the use of such symbols 
permitted their being applied to any and every 
quantity; yet, in any one application, the quantity 
was considered as fixed and definite. But most 
of the magnitudes of Nature are in a state of con- 
tinual variation; indeed, since all motion is varia- 
tion, the latter is a universal characteristic of all 
phenomena. No serious advance could be made in 
the application of algebraic language to the expres- 
sion of physical phenomena until it could be so 
extended as to express variation in quantities, as 
well as the quantities themselves. This extension, 
worked out independently by Newton and Leibnitz, 
may be classed as the most fruitful of conceptions 
in exact science. With it the way was opened for 
the unimpeded and continually accelerated progress 
of the two last centuries. 

The feature of this period which has the closest 
relation to the purpose of our coming together is 
the seemingly endless subdivision of knowledge 
into specialties, many of which are becoming so 
minute and so isolated that they seem to have no 
interest for any but their few pursuers. Happily 
science itself has afforded a corrective for its own 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 25 

tendency in this direction. The careful thinker 
will see that in these seemingly divergent branches 
common elements and common principles are com- 
ing more and more to light. There is an increasing 
recognition of methods of research and of deduction 
which are common to large branches or to the whole 
of science. We are more and more recognizing the 
principle that progress in knowledge implies its 
reduction to more exact forms, and the expression 
of its ideas in language more or less mathematical. 
The problem before the organizers of this Congress 
was, therefore, to bring the sciences together and to 
seek for the unity which we believe underlies their 
infinite diversity. 

The assembling of such a body as now fills this 
hall was scarcely possible in any preceding genera- 
tion, and is made possible now only through the 
agency of science itself. It differs from all preceding 
international meetings in the universality of its 
scope, which aims to include the whole of knowl- 
edge. It is also unique in that none but leaders 
have been sought out as members. It is unique 
in that so many lands have delegated their choicest 
intellects to carry on its work. They come from the 
country to which our Republic is indebted for a 
third of its territory, including the ground on which 
we stand; from the land which has taught us that the 
most scholarly devotion to the languages and learn- 
ing of the cloistered past is compatible with leader- 
ship in the practical application of modern science 



26 SIMON NEWCOMB 



to the arts of life; from the island whose language 
and literature have found a new field and a vigorous 
growth in this region; from the last seat of the 
Holy Roman Empire; from the country which, 
remembering a monarch who made an astronomical 
observation at the Greenwich Observatory, has 
enthroned science in one of the highest places in its 
government; from the peninsula so learned that we 
have invited one of its scholars to come to tell us 
of our own language; from the land which gave 
birth to Leonardo, Galileo, Torricelli, Columbus, 
Volta — ^what an array of immortal names! — from 
the little republic of glorious history which, breeding 
men rugged as its eternal snow peaks, has yet been 
the seat of scientific investigation since the day of the 
Bernoullis; from the land whose heroic dwellers 
did not hesitate to use the ocean itself to protect it 
against invaders, and which now makes us marvel 
at the amount of erudition compressed within its 
little area; from the nation across the Pacific, which, 
by half a century of unequaled progress in the arts 
of life, has made an important contribution to 
evolutionary science through demonstrating the 
falsity of the theory that the most ancient races are 
doomed to be left in the rear of the advancing age — 
in a word, from every great center of intellectual 
activity on the globe I see before me eminent repre- 
sentatives of that world advance in knowledge which 
we have met to celebrate. May we not confidently 
hope that the discussions of such an assemblage 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 27 

will prove pregnant of a future for science which 
shall outshine even its brilliant past? 

Gentlemen and scholars all, you do not visit our 
shores to find great collections in which centuries 
of humanity have given expression on canvas and 
in marble to their hopes, fears, and aspirations. 
Nor do you expect institutions and buildings hoary 
with age. But as you feel the vigor latent in the 
fresh air of these expansive prairies, which has col- 
lected the products of human genius by which we are 
here surrounded, and, I may add, brought us to- 
gether; as you study the institutions which we have 
founded for the benefit not only of our own people, 
but of humanity at large; as you meet the men who, 
in the short space of one century, have transformed 
this valley from a savage wilderness into what it is 
to-day, then may you find compensation for the Want 
of a past like yours by seeing with prophetic eye a 
future world power of which this region shall be the 
seat. If such is to be the outcome of the institutions 
which we are now building up, then may your 
present visit be a blessing both to your posterity and 
ours by making that power one for good to all 
mankind. Your deliberations will help to demon- 
strate to us and to the world at large that the reign 
of law must supplant that of brute force in the 
relations of nations, just as it has supplanted it 
in the relations of individuals. You will help to 
show that the war which science is now waging 
against the sources of diseases, pain, and misery 



28 SIMON NEWCOMB 



offers an even nobler field for the exercise of heroic 
qualities than can that of battle. We hope that 
when, after your too fleeting sojourn in our midst, 
you return to your own shores you will long feel the 
influence of the new air you have breathed in an 
infusion of increased vigor in pursuing your varied 
labors. And if a new impetus is thus given to the 
great intellectual movement of the past century, 
resulting not only in promoting the unification of 
knowledge, but in widening its fields through new 
combinations of eff"ort on the part of its votaries, 
the projectors, organizers, and supporters of this 
Congress of Arts and Science will be justified of their 
labors. 



II 

THE RELATION OF PURE SCIENCE TO 
ENGINEERING 

SIR JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON 

[As Simon Newcomb indicates in his address, the material 
improvements which society accepts as a matter of course, 
or as due to the law of supply and demand, are the result of 
investigations undertaken without thought of pecuniary reward. 
On the obvious relationship between pure and applied science, 
a relationship which the engineer is sometimes apt to forget, 
there can be no better authority than Sir Joseph John Thomson 
(1856- ), who is an engineer by training and a physicist by 
profession. Educated at Owens College, now the Victoria 
University of Manchester, he became Cavendish Profes- 
sor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge, and Professor of 
Physics in the Royal Institution. Of his contributions to science 
the most important are the ionic theory of electricity, the 
electrical theory of the inertia of matter, and the conclusions 
resulting from a long series of theoretical and experimental 
investigations of radioactivity. Some idea of the epoch-making 
character of these developments may be gathered from the fact 
that, in addition to medals granted by the Royal Society and 
the Smithsonian Institution, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for 
Physics in 1906. His treatises on electrical phenomena are 
well-known. The following article is an abstract of an address 
delivered before the Junior Institution of Engineers. It is 
based on the report in the Electrical Engineer of November 25, 
1910.] 

Though I am not an engineer, I started life with 
the intention of being one, and studied engineering 
for some years at Owens College, Manchester, under 

29 



30 SIR JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON 

one of the most profound and original engineers 
this country has produced — Professor Osborne 
Reynolds. Indeed, I found the other day, when 
consulting the Calendar of the University of Man- 
chester in the hope of discovering something that 
would justify my presence here this evening, that I 
am the possessor of a certificate of proficiency in 
engineering. I had to abandon the profession 
however, because the usual method of entering it 
was to become an apprentice to some well-known 
firm which charged heavy fees for the privilege. 
Owing to the death of my father before I had com- 
pleted my course at college, I was not in a position 
to pay the necessary fees, and had to direct my 
attention to other pursuits. 

Though I am afraid that any knowledge of engi- 
neering I ever possessed has long since evaporated, 
my short training for that profession has had a 
direct influence on my work in physics and on the 
way I regard physical phenomena. I never feel 
contented nor comfortable with the representation of 
an effect by systems of equations, valuable as these 
are for many purposes; the stifled instincts of the 
engineer — for I suppose it is that — make me restless 
until I can imagine some kind of mechanical model 
which possesses properties analogous to those of the 
phenomenon under consideration. 

The title of my address this evening, " The 
Relation of Pure Science to Engineering," is one in 



RELATION OF PURE SCIENCE TO ENGINEERING 31 

which the nomenclature requires perhaps some ex- 
planation. The distinction between pure science and 
engineering is one not of method but of aim. The 
methods employed by the physicist and the qualities 
of mind called into play in his investigations are, 
to a very large extent, the same as those used by 
the engineer in the higher and more pioneering 
branches of engineering. It is the aim that is 
different. The physicist endeavors to discover new 
properties of matter, new physical phenomena, for 
the sake of extending his knowledge of Nature, and 
without any thought as to their utility or the 
possibility of their application to the service of man. 
Faraday, when he discovered electromagnetic in- 
duction, was not thinking of the electric light, nor 
electric traction, nor the foundation of a great indus- 
try; he was trying to learn something about elec- 
tricity. And so it is with all great discoveries. 
The joy of discovering something new and true is 
so great that other things sink into insignificance. I 
do not suppose for a moment that the pleasure which 
Lord Rayleigh gets from having discovered argon 
is at all diminished by the fact that argon has not 
yet received any commercial application.^ 

* Argon is now used commercially in the tungar rectifier, a device for 
rectifying alternating current. As this rectifier is steady and economi- 
cal, it has superseded the mercury arc rectifier formerly used in charging 
storage batteries. 

Another case in point is the utilization of helium. Before igi6 not 
more than one hundred cubic feet had been separated. When the armis- 
tice was signed, 147,000 cubic feet were awaiting shipment to Europe 
for use in dirigible balloons. See the Journal of Industrial Chemistry, 
II, 148-153 (1919). — Editor. 



32 SIR JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON 

It is not the business of the physicist in his re- 
searches to concern himself at all with their utility; 
utility can very well take care of itself, or be left 
to others to develop. It is a striking feature in the 
history of science that almost every advance in 
pure physics has been turned to account by the 
engineer, the manufacturer, or the doctor. To 
take an example. Could anything be, at first sight, 
more remote from practical application than the 
study of the passage of electricity through gases? 
Beautiful and interesting though the phenomena 
with which it has to deal undoubtedly are, they 
seemed for long remote from any practical applica- 
tion.^ Yet it is to the study of these phenomena 
that we owe the discovery of Rontgen rays, which 
are now throughout the world used for the allevia- 
tion of human suffering. Again, the purely mathe- 
matical theory of the transmission of electrical waves 
along conductors, as developed by Mr. Heaviside, 
was the origin of Pupin's successful system of long- 
distance telephony. No one can foresee in its early 
stages the possibilities which may be latent in any 
scientific discovery. 

Nothing could, I think, be more disastrous to the 
progress of engineering than that workers in pure 
science should hamper themselves by considera- 
tions as to the utility of their work, or confine their 
attention to points which have an obvious practical 

^ Practical applications are to be found in the receivers for the wire- 
less telephone and telegraph, — the audion, the pliotron, and the kenetron 
tubes. — Editor. 



" RELATION OF PURE SCIENCE TO ENGINEERING 33 

application. With such limitations, details in exist- 
ing processes might be improved, but the great 
advances which have revolutionized industries would 
be lacking. If this poHcy had been pursued in the 
past, we should still be travelling by stage coaches, 
though doubtless these would have been greatly 
improved since the time of our ancestors. 

The province of applied science, of engineering, 
is to survey the facts known to science, and to 
select those which seem to have in them the possi- 
bilities of industrial application; to study and 
develop them from this point of view. This de- 
velopment, I think, can best be accomplished in 
laboratories attached to works engaged in active 
trade. Here are opportunities for testing the results 
on a commercial scale; here is available the tech- 
nical knowledge of detail which often means the 
difference between success and failure; and here, 
too, are probably available greater supplies of money 
and greater incentives to success than are at the 
disposal of government, municipal, or university 
bodies. 

A closer connection with pure science would be 
of the greatest service to engineering and commerce 
in this country. Great strides in this direction have 
been made in recent years; but we are, I think, 
still behind Germany in the importance we attach 
to pure science, and in the eagerness with which new 
discoveries are applied to industrial purposes. The 



34 SIR JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON 

case of the aniline dye industry has been made the 
text of many a sermon, but we have not yet taken the 
lesson to heart; ^ for it is easy to find instances 
which are quite parallel, and which have occurred 
within the last few months. Let me give you one. 
To judge from the number of ''thermos flasks" 
one meets with, and the prevalence of advertise- 
ments describing their virtues, their manufacture 
must constitute a large and profitable business. I 
am told, however, that none of them are made in 
England. Yet the thermos flask is an English in- 
vention; it is nothing but the contrivance known to 
physicists as the " Dewar vessel," a double vessel 
where the inside is separated from the outside by 
a vacuum, which was invented by Sir James Dewar 
for the purpose of storing hquid air without too 
much evaporation. Although the discovery was made 
in England, no Enghsh manufacturers took it up, 
but left it to their foreign rivals to make it the basis 
of an important trade. 

The spirit I should like to see spread throughout 
industry is the exact antithesis of that expressed by 
the saying, **0h, that is very well in theory, but it 
does not work in practice." This saying is really 
a contradiction in terms; for if the theory is right, 
and the practice is right, the two must be consistent. 
And it should be the aim of workers in pure and 

1 Recent developments have made the United States independent of 
the German dye industry. The E. I. Dupont de Nemours Company 
and the National Aniline Company can now meet the demands of the 
American market. — Editor. 



RELATION OF PURE SCIENCE TO ENGINEERING 35 

applied science to make them agree; unless they do, 
something is wrong. 

To unite and harmonize these two essential things, 
theory and practice, should be the mission of applied 
science. I have mentioned some cases in which the 
practical application lagged behind the theory. 
The converse is, however, quite as common; it often 
happens that when a subject is applied to practical 
purposes, and tried on what may be called an engi- 
neering scale, it develops far beyond the stage it 
has reached in the laboratory or in the portfolio of 
the mathematician. Practice, as in the case of 
aviation at the present time, outstrips theory, and 
progress has to be made by trying one thing after 
another until something is found which is successful. 
Multitudes of instances where this has occurred could 
be given. To take only two. There are many phe- 
nomena in wireless telegraphy which have not yet 
received any adequate explanation, and there are 
others which, though now understood, were not 
until long after their existence had been discovered 
by those engaged in the practical development of 
that process. Again, from what I remember of the 
lectures on chemistry to which I listened more than 
thirty years ago, I imagine that the sulphuric acid 
industry was in full vigor before chemists were agreed 
as to exactly what it is that does happen when that 
substance is being manufactured. These are, how- 
ever, just the cases when research laboratories in 
connection with works may render most efficient 



36 SIR JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON 

aid, and where investigations skilfully conducted by 
scientific workers acquainted with the results met 
with in practice may lead to a much more rapid 
development of the subject and the saving of large 
sums of money. The practical man in this case is 
in the position of the physicist when he meets with a 
new phenomenon for which at first he can see no ex- 
planation; the same qualities of mind are required, 
and though the scale of the experiments may be 
different, the general method of attack will be much 
the same in the two cases. It is the object of applied 
science to keep theory and practice at the same level 
by raising the one underneath, not by pulling down 
the one above. Theory and practice do better work 
when they are driven abreast than in tandem. 

The more intimate the relation between theory 
and practice, between workers in pure science and 
those engaged in the appHcation of science to the 
arts, the greater will be the opportunity of deepen- 
ing the faith in science of the practical man and the 
reliance he places on its conclusions and anticipa- 
tions. For in the case of science famiHarity breeds 
confidence and not contempt. I admit that this 
confidence does not come at once. When one first 
begins to do practical work in the laboratory, and 
to verify by experiments the principles taught in the 
textbooks, the impression one derives from one's 
first attempt is that there is a great deal of truth in 
the saying of a former tutor of Trinity College, 
that the principle of the constancy of the laws of 



RELATION OF PURE SCIENCE TO ENGINEERING 37 

Nature was never discovered in a laboratory. A 
cynic, too, has remarked that if you wish to beHeve 
in the laws of Nature, never try an experiment. 
These, however, are only the feelings of the novice, 
and with greater experience and knowledge of prac- 
tical work they are replaced by a continually in- 
creasing confidence in the conclusions drawn from 
abstract reasoning. This confidence in the results 
obtained by scientific reasoning should, I imagine, 
be an almost indispensable qualification for the engi- 
neer who wishes to open new ground. One of 
the most conspicuous examples of faith in science I 
am acquainted with is the discovery of artificial 
indigo. It is said that the Badische Company 
spent twenty years and nearly a million sterling 
on the solution of this problem before they suc- 
ceeded, and before they got any pecuniary return. 
From the few opportunities I have had of seeing 
anything of manufacturing processes in different 
countries, I have got the impression that faith in 
the results of pure science is more robust in Germany 
than in this country; that here we cultivate more 
exclusively enterprises which ripen quickly and yield 
an immediate return upon the capital invested. 

It is not that in England there is, among the leaders 
of applied science, any failure to recognize the im- 
portance of science, or any reluctance to use it; we 
are fortunate in this country to possess many con- 
spicuous examples of the combination of pure and 
applied science. It is rather that what I may call 



38 SIR JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON 

the scientific spirit has not diffused through and 
influenced the bulk of our industries to the extent 
that it has done in one or two other countries. We 
have never lacked pioneers who have led the way 
in the application of science to industry; we have 
had men who, like Rankine, have made engineering 
itself a science, but it cannot, I think, be maintained 
that science plays as large a part in engineering and 
industry on the whole here as it does in Germany. 
How is this to be altered ? No doubt a most potent 
influence in this direction will come when it is realized 
more fully than it is at present that the union of 
science and industry pays. I never realized myself 
how prolific this union is so fully as I did the other 
day when I was travelling from Cologne to Berlin. 
After leaving Cologne we travelled for nearly two 
hours through an almost uninterrupted succession of 
factories, the majority of them showing every indi- 
cation of having been built within the last few years. 

Another reason for the comparative neglect of 
pure science in engineering, I think, is that the train- 
ing in that subject given in our engineering and 
technical colleges is not that best adapted to develop 
any enthusiasm for it. Economy of time is so im- 
portant that attention is paid only to those parts 
of science which have direct application to present- 
day practice in engineering or other industries. The 
result is that the student gets his pure science in 
snippets, and that it seems to him a disconnected 



. RELATION OF PURE SCIENCE TO ENGINEERING 39 

bundle of facts in which he is unable to feel much 
interest. Though this condition is bad in every 
subject, its results are especially conspicuous in 
mathematics. The language of mathematics should 
be as famiHar to the engineer as his mother tongue; 
his mathematics should be a part of himself, and he 
should be able to use them with the confidence with 
which a good workman uses his tools. If, however, 
the student's training in mathematics or pure 
science is confined to those parts of the subject 
which are of direct practical utility, he will never 
acquire this confidence. He may be quite able to 
follow the mathematics he meets with in the course 
of his reading, but for him mathematics will never be 
a formidable weapon with which to attack new prob- 
lems. If you cut away all the parts of a science 
except those which seem to have immediate practical 
application, you rob it of its beauty and vigor, 
and make it exceedingly uninteresting. All work 
and no play make Jack a dull boy; all the useful 
parts of a science and nothing else make a desper- 
ately dull subject. 

It will, I know, be urged that the curriculum for 
engineering students is already so overloaded that it 
is impossible to find time for a fuller study of science 
and mathematics. I acknowledge that at present 
this is true. But it is only true because the cur- 
riculum is founded on the truly British idea that our 
boys are not expected to learn anything at school. 
Most of the work in the courses for students in their 



40 SIR JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON 

first year, and some of that in the second, in all the 
engineering schools with which I am acquainted, 
is of a kind that a boy might well be expected to 
do at school. There is no reason why a boy of 
eighteen of the mental calibre which would justify 
his becoming an engineer should not have a good 
working knowledge of the calculus and the ele- 
mentary parts of differential equations, and have 
read a considerable portion of dynamics. This could, 
I am convinced, be done without undue specializa- 
tion, and without depriving the boy of the literary 
training which is essential if he is to keep his sym- 
pathies wide and his mind receptive. If students 
entered our engineering schools prepared up to this 
standard, changes could be made which would widen 
their interests in pure science and tighten their 
hold upon it. 

Though I regret the predominance of classics in 
our public schools, I should regret still more any 
system which allowed boys to restrict their studies 
entirely to scientific subjects; in fact, any system 
which involved premature specialization. A large 
part of the success of an engineer depends upon his 
power of impressing and influencing the men with 
whom he is brought into contact. Now, of all the 
various kinds of apparatus with which one has to 
work, man is by far the most sensitive, the most 
likely to get out of order, the most difficult from 
which to get results. The education of the engineer 
ought then to be framed so as to develop those 



RELATION OF PURE SCIENCE TO ENGINEERING 41 

qualities which make him, in the highest sense of 
the word, a man of the world, one easy to go on with, 
one with whom it is pleasant to deal; to make him, 
in fact, a man with wide sympathies and interests. 
These qualities are much more likely to be developed 
by a training which includes a considerable study of 
literature than by one which is severely restricted to 
scientific or technical subjects. 

What seems to me by far the most important thing 
to aim at in the school training of the boy who is 
to be an engineer is not that he should be taught a 
number of facts about the various branches of 
science; that is a matter of slight importance at this 
stage of his career. What is important is that he 
should be trained in the scientific habit of mind, 
which, after all, is nothing but organized and directed 
common sense. The training that is wanted is one 
that will train the boy to think about things, one 
that will train him so that he will get the whole 
weight of his mind on the problem he is tackling. If 
he has got this power, it is not, I think, a matter of 
primary importance as to what may have been the 
nature of the studies by which he has attained it. 
A boy who has this power is far more likely to make 
a good engineer, even though his training has been 
wholly classical, than one without it, even though 
he has studied the whole gamut of the sciences. 

Another point to which I attach great importance 
in the early training of the engineer, and also of the 
physicist, is that he should have a good drilling in 



42 SIR JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON 

experimental mechanics, and make many simple 
experiments on the properties of a body in motion. 
I should encourage him to have a little workshop 
of his own, not so much that he may acquire skill 
in the use of tools as that by familiarity with matter 
in motion and machines he may cultivate the 
mechanical instinct. By this I mean the power 
which some possess of feeling instinctively without 
conscious reasoning what is the accurate solution of 
some mechanical problem. This faculty, which is 
obviously one of great importance to engineers and 
physicists alike, is possessed by some men to an 
astounding degree. It was said by Clerk Maxwell's 
contemporaries at Cambridge that he could not think 
wrongly about mechanical problems even if he tried 
to do so. I have heard it said about a great engineer 
that you never feel any doubt about his conclu- 
sions until he begins to give his reasons for them. 
This instinct, which all great engineers possess, can 
be developed by long familiarity with mechanical 
studies. Finally, I would conclude by quoting the 
words of one who can speak with far greater authority 
than I on any question connected with the training 
of engineers; I mean Sir Andrew Noble. " Do not," 
he said, " be too utilitarian; do not narrow the 
search for knowledge down to a search for utilitarian 
knowledge, for knowledge that you think will pay. 
Above all things, pursue knowledge." 



THE TYPES OF ENGINEERING 
EDUCATION 



Ill 

TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION FOR 
ENGINEERS 

JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

[The two phases of engineering education to which Sir J. J 
Thomson refers in closing are discussed with admirable clear- 
ness by John Butler Johnson (1850-1902). No one has con- 
trasted more sharply the two kinds of competency essential to 
success — Competency to Serve, and Competency to Appreciate and 
Enjoy. Of both types Johnson was an inspiring exemplar. 
Educated at the University of Michigan, he became a practicing 
engineer, an educator, and an inventor. After serving in the 
United States Lake and Mississippi River Surveys, he was elected 
Professor of Civil Engineering in Washington University, at 
St. Louis, where he had charge of the timber testing laboratory 
of the United States, and, later, was appointed Dean of the 
Department of Mechanics and Engineering at the University 
of Wisconsin. While thus engaged, he proposed the parabolic 
column formula, and introduced the roller extensometer for 
testing materials. Though devoted to his profession, a presi- 
dent of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Educa- 
tion, and the author of several treatises of notable merit, he 
made systematic effort to extend his knowledge of literature 
and art. The following essay is reprinted, by permission of the 
editors, from the interesting and authoritative volume, Addresses 
to Engineering Students, published by Dr. J. A. L. Waddell and 
Mr. John Lyle Harrington.] 

Education may be defined as a means of gradual 
emancipation from the thraldom of incompetence. 
Since incompetence leads of necessity to failure, and 

45 



46 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

since competence alone leads to success; and since 
the natural or uneducated man is but incompetence 
personified, it is of supreme importance that this 
thraldom, or this enslaved condition, in which we 
are all born, should be removed in some way. While 
unaided individual effort has worked, and will con- 
tinue to work marvels, these recognized exceptions 
acknowledge the rule that mankind in general must 
be aided in acquiring this complete mastery over the 
latent powers of head, heart, and hand. The formal 
aids in this process of emancipation are found in the 
grades of schools and colleges with which the children 
of this country are blessed beyond those of almost 
any other country or time. The boys or girls who 
fail to embrace these emancipating opportunities 
to the fullest extent practicable are thereby con- 
senting to degrees of incompetence and failure 
which they have it in their power to prevent. This 
they will discover to their chagrin and grief when it 
is too late to regain the lost opportunities. 

There are, however, two general classes of com- 
petency which I wish to discuss to-day which are 
generated in the schools. These are Competency 
to Serve, and Competency to Appreciate and Enjoy. 

By competency to serve is meant the ability to 
perform one's due proportion of the world's work 
which brings to society a common benefit; which 
makes of this world a continually better home for 
the race, and which tends to fit the race for the 
immortal life in which it puts its trust. 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION FOR ENGINEERS 47 

By competency to appreciate and enjoy is meant 
the ability to understand, to appropriate, and to 
assimilate those great personal achievements of the 
past and present in the fields of the true, the beauti- 
ful, and the good which bring into our lives a kind 
of peace, and joy, and gratitude which can be found 
in no other way. 

It is true that all kinds of elementary education 
contribute alike to both of these ends, but in the 
so-called higher education it is too common to choose 
between them rather than to include them both. 
Since it is only service which the world is wilHng 
to pay for, it is only those competent and willing 
to serve a public or private utility who are compen- 
sated in a financial way. It is the education which 
brings a competency to serve, therefore, which is 
often called the utilitarian, and sometimes spoken 
of contemptuously as the bread-and-butter educa- 
tion. On the other hand, the education which gives 
a competency to appreciate and to enjoy is com- 
monly spoken of as a cultural education. Which 
kind of education is the higher and nobler, if they 
must be contrasted, depends upon the point of view. 
If personal pleasure and happiness are the chief 
end and aim in life, then for those persons who 
have no disposition to serve, the cultural educa- 
tion is the more worthy of admiration and selection 
(conditioned of course on the bodily comforts being 
so far provided for as to make all financial compensa- 
tions of no object to the individual). If, however, 



48 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

service to others is the most worthy purpose in Hfe, 
and if, in addition, such service brings the greatest 
happiness, then the education which develops the 
abiHty to serve, in some capacity, should be regarded 
as the higher and more worthy. This kind of edu- 
cation has the further advantage that the money 
consideration it brings makes its possessor a self- 
supporting member of society instead of a drone or 
parasite, which those must be who cannot serve. 

The higher education which leads to a life of service 
has been known as a professional education, as law, 
medicine, the ministry, teaching, and the like. 
These have long been known as the learned pro- 
fessions. A learned profession may be defined as a 
vocation in which scholarly accomplishments are 
used in the service of society, or of other individuals, 
for a valuable consideration. Under such a defini- 
tion every new vocation in which a very considerable 
amount of scholarship is required for its successful 
prosecution, and which is placed in the service of 
others, must be held as a learned profession. And as 
engineering now demands fully as great an amount 
of learning, or scholarship, as any other, it has already 
taken a high rank among these professions, although 
as a learned profession it is scarcely half a century 
old. Engineering differs from all other learned 
professions, however, in this, that its learning has 
to do only with the inanimate world, the world of 
dead matter and force. The materials, the laws, 
and the forces of Nature, and scarcely to any extent 



TWO KINDS OF ENUCATION FOR ENGINEERS 49 

its life, are the peculiar field of the engineer. Not 
only is the engineer pretty thoroughly divorced from 
life in general, but even with the society of which 
he is a part his professional life has little in common. 
His profession is so new that it has practically no 
past, either of history or of literature, which merits 
his consideration, much less his laborious study. 
Neither do the ordinary social or political problems 
enter in any way into his sphere of operations. 
Natural law, dead matter, and lifeless force make up 
his working world, and in these he lives and moves 
and has his professional being. Professionally re- 
garded, what to him is the history of his own or of 
other races? What have the languages and the 
literatures of the world of value to him? What 
interest has he in domestic or foreign politics, or in 
the various social and religious problems of the 
day? In short, what interest is there for him in 
what we now commonly include in the term " the 
humanities ? " It must be admitted that in a 
professional way they have little or none. Except 
in modern languages, by which he obtains access 
to current progress in applied science, he has 
practically no professional interest in any of these 
things. His structures are made no safer, no more 
economical; his prime movers are no more powerful 
nor efficient; his electrical wonders no more occult 
nor useful; his tools no more ingenious nor effective 
because of a knowledge of all these humanistic 
affairs. As a mere server of society, therefore, an 



50 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

engineer is about as good a tool without all this 
cultural knowledge as with it.^ But as a citizen, 
as a husband and father, as a companion, and more 
than all, as one's own constant, perpetual, unavoid- 
able personality, the taking into one's life of a 
large knowledge of the life and thought of the world, 
both past and present, is an important matter indeed; 
and of these two kinds of education, as they affect 
the life work, the professional success, and the 
personal happiness of the engineer, I will speak more 
in detail. 

I am here using the term engineer as including 
the large class of modern industrial woi;kers who 
make the new application of science to the needs of 
modern life their peculiar business and profession. 
A man of this class may also be called an applied 
scientist. Evidently he must have a large acquaint- 
ance with such sciences as surveying, physics, chem- 
istry, geology, metallurgy, electricity, applied me- 
chanics, kinematics, machine design, power genera- 
tion and transmission, structural designing, and 
land and water transportation. And as a common 
solvent of all the problems arising in these various 
subjects he must have an extended knowledge 
of mathematics, without which he would be like a 
sailor without compass or rudder. To the engineer 
mathematics is a tool of investigation, a means to 
an end, and not the end itself. The same thing may 

* Contrast Johnson's point of view with Sir J. J. Thomson's. — Editor. 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION FOR ENGINEERS 51 

be said of his physics, his chemistry, and of all his 
other scientific studies. They are all to be made 
tributary to the solution of problems which may 
arise in his professional career. Likewise he needs 
a free and correct use of his mother tongue, that 
he may express himself clearly and forcibly both in 
speech and composition, and an ability to read both 
French and German, that he may read the current 
technical literature in the two other languages which 
are most fruitful in new and original technical matter. 
It is quite true that the mental development, 
the growth of one's mental powers and the com- 
mand over them, which comes incidentally in the 
acquisition of all this technical knowledge is of far 
more value than the knowledge itself; and hence 
great care is given in all good technical schools to the 
mental processes of the students and to a thorough 
and logical method of presentation and of acquisi- 
tion. In other words, while you are under our in- 
struction, it IS much more important that you should 
think consecutively, rationally, and logically, than 
that your conclusions should be numerically correct. 
But as soon as you leave the school, the exact reverse 
holds. Your employer is not concerned with your 
mental development, nor with your mental proc- 
esses, so long as your results are correct; and hence 
we must pay some attention to numerical accuracy 
in the school, especially in the upper classes. 

We must remember, however, that the mind of 
the engineer is primarily a workshop and not a ware- 



52 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

house or lumber-room of information. Your facts 
are better stored in your library. Room there is not 
so valuable as it is in the mind, and the informa- 
tion, furthermore, is better preserved. Knowledge 
alone is not power. The ability to use it is a 
latent power, and the actual use of it is a power. 
Instead of storing your minds with useful knowledge, 
therefore, store your minds with useful tools, and 
with a knowledge only of how to use such tools. 
Then your minds will become mental workshops, 
well fitted for turning out products of untold value 
to your day and generation. Everything you acquire 
in your course in this college, therefore, you should 
look upon as mental tools with which you are equip- 
ping yourselves for your future careers. It may well 
be that some of your work will be useful rather for 
the sharpening of your wits and for the development 
of mental grasp, just as gymnastic exercise is of use 
only in developing your physical system. In this 
case it has served as a tool of development instead 
of one for subsequent use. 

Because all your knowledge here gained is to 
serve you as tools, it must be acquired quantitatively 
rather than qualitatively. First, last, and all the 
time, you are required to know not how simply, 
but how much, how far, how fast, to what extent, 
at what cost, with what certainty, and with what 
factor of safety. In the cultural education where 
one is learning only to appreciate and to enjoy, 
it may satisfy the average mind to know that coal 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION FOR ENGINEERS 53 

burned under a boiler generates steam which, 
entering a cyhnder, moves a piston which turns the 
engine. But the engineer must know how many 
heat units there are in a pound of coal burned, 
how many of these are generated in the furnace, how 
many of them pass into the water, how much steam 
is consumed per horse-power per hour, and, finally, 
how much effective work is done by the engine per 
pound of coal fed to the furnace. Merely qualita- 
tive knowledge leads to the grossest errors of judg- 
ment, and is of that kind of little learning which is a 
dangerous thing. At my summer home I have an 
hydraulic ram set below a dam, for furnishing a 
water supply. Nearby is an old abandoned water 
power grist mill. A man and his wife were looking 
at the ram last summer, and the lady was overheard 
to ask what it is for. The man looked about, saw 
the idle water-wheel of the old mill, and ventured 
the opinion that it must be used to run the mill. 
He knew a hydraulic ram when he saw it, and he 
knew that it is used to generate power, and that 
power will run a mill. Ergo, a hydraulic ram will 
run a mill. This conclusion is on a par with 
thousands of similar errors of judgment where one's 
knowledge is qualitative only. All engineering 
problems are purely quantitative from the beginning 
to the end, and so are all other problems, whether 
material, or moral, or financial, or commercial, or 
social, or political, or religious.^ All judgments 

^ Can this statement be accepted? — Editor. 



54 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

passed on such problems, therefore, must be quanti- 
tative judgments. How poorly prepared to pass 
such judgments are those whose knowledge is quali- 
tative only. Success in all fields depends largely 
on the accuracy of one's judgment in foreseeing 
events, and in engineering it depends wholly on 
such accuracy. An engineer must see all around his 
problems, and take account of every contingency 
which can happen in the ordinary course of events. 
When all such contingencies have been foreseen and 
provided against, the unexpected cannot happen, 
as everything has been foreseen. It is customary 
to say that " the unexpected always happens." 
This, of course, is untrue. What is meant is that 
" it is only the unexpected which happens; " for the 
very good reason that what has been anticipated has 
been provided against. 

In order that knowledge may be used as a tool in 
investigations and in the solution of problems, it 
must be so used constantly during the period of 
its acquisition. Hence the large amount of drawing- 
room, field, laboratory, and shop practice introduced 
into our engineering courses. We try to make theory 
and practice go hand m hand. In fact, we teach that 
theory is only generalized practice. From the 
necessary facts, observed in special experiments, or 
in actual practice, general principles are deduced 
from which effects can be foreseen or derived for 
new cases arising in practice. This is like saying, 
in surveying, that with a true and accurate hind- 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION FOR ENGINEERS 55 

sight an equally true and accurate forward course 
can be run. Nearly all engineering knowledge, 
outside the pure mathematics, is of this experimental 
or empirical character, and we generally know who 
made the experiments, how accordant his results 
were, and what weight can be given to his conclusions. 
When we can find in our engineering literature no 
sufficiently accurate data, or none exactly covering 
the case in hand, we must set to work to make a set 
of experiments which will cover the given conditions, 
in order to obtain numerical factors, or possibly 
new laws, which will serve to make our calculations 
prove true in the completed structure or scheme. 
The ability to plan and carry out such crucial tests 
and experiments is one of the most important objects 
of an engineering college training, and we give our 
students a large amount of such laboratory practice. 
In all such work it is the absolute truth we are 
seeking, and hence any guessing at data or falsi- 
fying of records or " doctoring " of the computations 
is of the nature of a professional crime. Any copy- 
ing of records from other observers, when students 
are supposed to make their own observations, is 
both a fraud upon themselves as well as upon their 
instructor, and indicates a disposition of mind 
which has nothing in common with that of the 
engineer, who is always and everywhere a truth- 
seeker and truth-tester. The sooner such a person 
leaves the college of engineering, the better for him 
and for the engineering profession. The mistakes 



56 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

of the engineer are quick to find him out and to 
proclaim aloud his incompetence. He is the one 
professional man who is obliged to be right, and 
for whom sophistry and self-deception are a fatal 
poison. But the engineer must be more than hon- 
est, he must be able to discern the truth. With him 
an honest motive is no justification. He must not 
only believe he is right; he must know he is right. 
And it is one of the greatest elements of satisfaction 
in this profession that it is commonly possible to 
secure in advance this almost absolute certainty 
of results. We deal with fixed laws and forces, and 
only so far as the materials used may be faulty, 
or of unknown character, or as contingencies can 
not be foreseen or anticipated, does a necessary 
ignorance enter into the problem. 

It must not be understood, however, that with all 
of both the theory and practice we are able to give 
our students in their four or five years' course they 
will be full-fledged engineers when they leave us. 
They ought to be excellent material out of which, 
with a few years' actual practice, they may become 
engineers of the first order. Just as a young physi- 
cian must have experience with actual patients, 
and as a young lawyer must have actual experience 
in the courts, so must an engineer have experi- 
ence with real problems before he can rightfully 
lay claim to the title of engineer. And in seeking 
this professional practice he must not be too choice. 
As a rule, the higher up one begins, the sooner his 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION FOR ENGINEERS 57 

promotion stops; and the lower down he begins, the 
higher will he ultimately climb. The man at the 
top should know in a practical way all the work 
over which he is called upon to preside, and this 
means beginning at the bottom. Too many of our 
graduates refuse to do this. No position is too 
menial in the learning of a business. But as your 
college training has enabled you to learn a new thing 
rapidly, you should rapidly master minor details; and 
in a few years you should be far ahead of the ordi- 
nary apprentice who went to work from the grammar 
school or from the high school. 

The great opportunity for the engineer of the 
future is in the direction and management of our 
manufacturing industries. We are about to be- 
come the world's workshop; as competition grows 
sharper, and as greater economies become necessary, 
the technically trained man will become an absolute 
necessity in the leading positions in all our industrial 
works. These are the positions hitherto held by 
men without technical training who have grown 
up with the business. They are being rapidly 
supplanted by technical men, who, however, must 
serve their apprenticeship from the bottom up. 

In the foregoing description of the technical educa- 
tion and work of the engineer, the engineer himself 
has been considered as a kind of human tool to be 
used in the interest of society. His service to 
society alone has been in contemplation. But as the 



58 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

engineer has also a personality which is capable of 
appreciation and enjoyment of the best this world 
has produced in the way of literature and art; 
as he is to be a citizen and a man of family; and, 
moreover, since he has a conscious self with which 
he must always commune, and from which he cannot 
escape, it is well worth his while to see to it that 
this self, this husband and father, this citizen and 
neighbor, is something more than a tool to be worked 
in other men's interests, and that his mind shall 
contain a library, a parlor, and a drawing-room, 
as well as a workship. And yet how many engineers' 
minds are all shops out of which only shop talk 
can be drawn! Such men are little more than ani- 
mated tools worked in the interest of society. They 
are liable to be something of a bore to their families 
and friends, almost a cipher in the social and reli- 
gious life of the community, and a weariness of the 
flesh to their more liberal minded professional 
brethren. Their lives are a continuous grind, 
which has for them doubtless a certain grim satis- 
faction, but which is monotonous and tedious in 
comparison with what might have been. Even 
when valued by the low standard of money-making, 
they are not so likely to secure lucrative incomes as 
they would be with a greater breadth of information 
and worldly interest. They are likely to stop in 
snug professional berths which they find ready-made 
for them, under some sort of fixed administration, 
and maintain through life a subordinate relation to 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION FOR ENGINEERS 59 

directing heads who, with a tithe of their technical 
abihty, are yet able, with their worldly knowledge, 
their breadth of interests, and their fellowship with 
men, to dictate to these narrower technical subordi- 
nates, and to fix for them their fields of operation. 

In order, therefore, that the technical man, who 
in material things knows what to do, and how to do 
it, may be able to get the thing done, and to direct 
the doing of it, he must be an engineer of men and of 
capital as well as of the materials and forces of 
Nature. In other words, he must cultivate human 
interests, human learning, human associations, and 
avail himself of every opportunity to further these 
personal and business relations. If he can make 
himself as good a business man, or as good a manager 
of men, as he usually makes of himself in the field 
of engineering he has chosen, there is no place 
too great, and no salary too high for him to aspire 
to. Of such men are our greatest railroad presidents 
and general managers and the directors of our 
largest industrial establishments. While most of 
their special knowledge must also be acquired in 
actual practice, some of it can best be obtained in 
college. The one crying weakness of our engineering 
graduates is ignorance of the business, the social, and 
the political world, and of human interests in general, 
They have little knowledge in common with the 
graduates of our literary colleges, and hence often 
find little pleasure in such associations. They be- 
come clannish, run mostly with men of their pro- 



60 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

fession, take little interest in the commercial or 
business departments of the establishments with 
which they are connected, and so become more and 
more fixed in their inanimate worlds of matter and 
force. I beseech you, therefore, while yet students, 
to try to broaden your interests, to extend your 
horizons now into other fields, even but for a bird's- 
eye view, and to profit, as far as possible, by the atmo- 
sphere of universal knowledge which you can breathe 
here through the entire period of your college course. 
Try to find a chum who is in another department; 
go to literary societies; haunt the library; attend 
the available lectures in literature, science, and art, 
attend the meetings of the Science Club; and in 
every way possible, with a peep here and a word 
there, improve to the utmost these marvelous 
opportunities which will never come to you again. 
Think not of tasks; call no assignments by such a 
name. Call them opportunities, and cultivate a 
hunger and thirst for all kinds of humanistic 
knowledge outside your particular world of dead 
matter; for you will never again have such an 
opportunity, and you will be always thankful that 
you made good use of this, your one chance in a 
lifetime. 

For your own personal happiness, and that of your 
immediate associates, secure in some way, either in 
college or after leaving it, an acquaintance with 
some of the world's best literature, with the leading 
facts of history, and with the biographies of the 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION FOR ENGINEERS 61 

greatest men in pure and applied science, as well as 
with those of statesmen and leaders in many fields. 
With this knowledge of great men, great thoughts, and 
great deeds will come that lively interest in men and 
affairs which is held by educated men generally, 
and which will put you on an even footing with them 
in your daily intercourse. This kind of knowledge 
also elevates and sweetens the intellectual life, leads 
to the formation of lofty ideals, helps one to a com- 
mand of good English, and in a hundred ways 
refines and inspires to high and noble endeavor. 
This is the cultural education leading to the appre- 
ciation and enjoyment man is assumed to possess. 

Think not, however, that I depreciate the peculiar 
work of the engineering college. It is by this kind 
of education alone that America has already become 
supreme in nearly all lines of material advancement. 
I am only anxious that the men who have made these 
things possible shall reap their full share of the bene- 
fits. 

In conclusion let me congratulate you on having 
selected courses of study which will bring you into 
the most intimate relation with the work of your 
generation. All life to-day is an endless round of 
scientific applications of means to ends, but such 
applications are still in their infancy. A decade 
now sees more material progress than a century 
in the past. Not to be scientifically trained in these 
matters is equivalent to-day to practical exclusion 



62 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

from all part and share in the industrial world. 
The entire direction of industry and commerce is 
to be in your hands. You are also charged with 
making the discoveries and inventions which will 
come in your generation. The day of the inventor, 
ignorant of science and of Nature's laws, has gone 
by. The mere mechanical contrivances have been 
pretty well exhausted. Henceforth profitable in- 
vention must include the use or embodiment of scien- 
tific principles with which the untrained artisan is 
unacquainted. More and more will invention be 
but the scientific application of means to ends, and 
this is what we teach in the engineering schools. 
Already our patent office is much puzzled to dis- 
tinguish between engineering and invention. Since 
engineering proper consists in the solution of new 
problems in the material world, and invention is 
likewise the discovery of new ways of doing things, 
they cover the same field. But an invention is 
patentable, while an engineering solution is not. 
Invention is supposed in law to be an inborn faculty 
by which new truth is conceived by no definable way 
of approach. If it had not been reached by a 
particular individual, it is assumed that it might 
never have been known. An engineering solution 
is supposed, and rightly, to have been reached by 
logical processes through known laws of matter, 
and force, and motion, so that another engineer, 
given the same problem, would probably have 
reached the same or an equivalent result. And this 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION FOR ENGINEERS 63 

is not patentable. Already a very large proportion 
of the patents issued could be nullified on this 
ground if the attorneys only knew enough to make 
their case. More and more, therefore, are the men 
of your profession to be charged with the responsi- 
bility, and to be credited with the honor, of the 
world's progress, and more and more is the world's 
work to be placed under your direction. These 
are your responsibilities and your honors. The 
tasks are great, and great will be your rewards. That 
you may fitly prepare yourself for them is the hope 
and trust of your teachers in this college of engi- 
neering. 

I will close this address by quoting Professor 
Huxley's definition of a liberal education. Says 
Huxley: " That man, I think, has had a liberal edu- 
cation who has been so trained in youth that his 
body is the ready servant of his will, and does with 
ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, 
it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, 
logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, 
and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam 
engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin 
the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the 
mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the 
great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the 
laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, 
is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained 
to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a 
tender conscience; who has learned to love all 



64 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all 
vileness, and to respect others as himself. 

" Such a one and no other, I conceive, has had a 
liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man 
can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make 
the best of her, and she of him. They will get on 
together rarely; she as his ever beneficent mother; 
he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister 
and interpreter." 



IV 

THE CLASSICAL-SCIENTIFIC FERSUS THE 

PURELY TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY 

COURSE 

HOWARD McCLENAHAN 

[The educational ideal sketched by John Butler Johnson is 
set forth in more detail by Howard McClenahan (1872- ), 
who is admirably fitted for the task. Educated at Princeton 
University as an electrical engineer, he is now Professor of 
Physics and Dean of the College in his Jlma Mater. The 
following address, reprinted, by permission of the author and 
editor, from the Proceedings of the American Institute of Elec- 
trical Engineers for September, 191 4, is based on an academic 
experience of twenty years. Though it was prepared for an 
association of electrical engineers, the conclusions are applicable 
to every type of engineering. The adjective " electrical," used in 
the title and two or three times throughout the address, has 
therefore been omitted.] 

Aristotle has stated the purpose of education to 
be to make the best possible man out of any one 
individual, to make the individual the best man that 
he can be. The best possible man, I take it, is the 
man who contributes the best of life to those depend- 
ent upon him and to the community and the country 
in which he lives. The best possible man is the man 
who brings sound judgment, broad learning, tolera- 
tion, and good will, as well as marked professional 

6S 



66 HOWARD McCLENAHAN 

or business ability, into the affairs of his Ufe. In 
a word, the best possible man — the best which any 
individual can make of himself — is the man whose 
capabilities are brought to the highest degree of 
development. 

Vahdity of judgment is dependent upon ability 
to take into consideration every factor which can 
affect the matter under consideration; and this 
ability is dependent upon knowledge of all these 
factors; is dependent upon knowledge of the legal, 
the economic, the scientific, the human, the sanitary, 
and even the religious aspects of the matter. Judg- 
ments which are based upon partial knowledge 
are dangerous just because they are partial, because 
they fail to take account of factors which may make 
or mar the success of the whole venture. 

The best medical judgment is not that of the phy- 
sician who knows all that is to be known of medicines 
and their effects upon the human system. The 
best medical judgment is that of the physician who 
has full knowledge of his materia medica plus a 
knowledge of the social and ancestral and religious 
antecedents and environm.ents of his patients. 

Breadth of knowledge, upon which sound judgment 
must rest, can be attained only by broad training. 
It can never be got through a purely technical 
training, thorough and fine and valuable though that 
may be. It can be had only by a study of history and 
economics, of philosophy and literature, of mathe- 
matics and the sciences. It is my belief that 



CLASSICAL-SCIENTIFIC VS. PURELY TECHNICAL 67 

nothing else contributes so much to the development 
of the imagination, of perseverance, and of the power 
of logical reasoning as does the proper study of Latin 
and Greek. But whether or not other languages 
be substituted for these two classical tongues, it 
seems certain that wide knowledge can be obtained 
only by a wide range of serious study. 

Complaint is constantly heard from the heads of 
large manufacturing concerns, from consulting en- 
gineers of international standing, and from those 
having the power of pubHc appointment, of the 
almost insuperable difficulty of finding well trained, 
thoroughly developed men to take responsible posi- 
tions. A limitless supply of half-trained engineers, 
of men who are technical men only, is constantly at 
hand. The supply of men who can do this one 
thing, or that one thing, well is never exhausted. 
The number of men who can look at any problem 
broadly and inclusively, who can think and can form 
a valid judgment about any new project, is said to 
be almost vanishingly small. In no other profession 
is there more room for men at the top than there is 
in engineering. This lack of well-rounded, trained 
men is the necessary effect of technical training; for 
technical training, by its very nature, is narrowing, 
and is not conducive to broadness of vision and sound- 
ness of judgment. In technical work, how much of 
success or failure depends upon painful attention 
to minute details ? How many of us who have done 
experimental work in electricity have not risked our 



68 HOWARD McCLENAHAN 

immortal souls only to find that all of our trouble 
was due to a loose contact in an inaccessible place? 
This necessary attention to detail has, and must 
have, the effect of developing narrowness rather 
than broadness, of limiting one's powers rather than 
of developing them in every particular. Another 
unfortunate effect of such narrow, rigorous training 
— and technical training must be most rigorous if 
it is to be anything — is the production of the feeHng, 
too often, that a thing must be useful in order to 
have any value, the production of an unwiHingness 
to learn anything unless it can be shown that it is 
immediately, or almost immediately, applicable 
to some practical end. This feeling is, perhaps, 
not the necessary result of purely technical training. 
It is, however, so common among purely technically 
trained men as to warrant one in being almost 
convinced that it is a nearly inevitable result of such 
one-sided training. 

I have attempted to indicate the necessity for a 
broad, general training for engineers when viewed 
from the side of rounded development and useful- 
ness. I wish, however, now to attempt to show that 
even in those things which are called technical sub- 
jects the best training for the engineer is the 
broad training upon which is superposed the detailed, 
strict, technical training. Mathematics and physics 
and chemistry are not tools of the engineering pro- 
fession. They are the very foundations of all engi- 



CLASSICAL-SCIENTIFIC VS. PURELY TECHNICAL 69 

neering, and their applications constitute engineering 
of all types; for engineering is simply the applica- 
tion to the specific of the general principles of physics 
and chemistry and mathematics. Therefore, the 
man who has the best training in the fundamentals 
of these sciences, and who has the greatest grasp 
of their principles, is, other things being equal, 
the one who will make the best trained engineer. 
The constant tendency in engineering training is to 
regard these sciences as the tools of engineering 
rather than as the very body and substance of 
engineering. In far too many cases, physics and 
chemistry are taught as " engineering physics " 
and " engineering chemistry," to the great loss 
of both engineering and these two sciences. For 
example, physics may be taught as the tool of 
engineering, in which case the student receives 
instruction in only those portions of physics which 
the particular instructor thinks will be of use to the 
engineer, without overmuch regard to the fact that he 
may be omitting those portions which help to make 
physics a great constructive mental discipline. 
This method not only injures a student's knowledge 
of physics and his conception of physics as a science; 
,it must also produce in his mind an impression in 
favor of useful knowledge, and a distaste for that 
which is apparently useless. This result neces- 
sarily handicaps the growing student in his sub- 
sequent work; for one can never predict when knowl* 
edge which is apparently useless will not become the 



70 HOWARD' McCLENAHAN 

most highly useful of all one's attainments. An 
example of the difference of these two types of 
training may be drawn from any of the several 
branches of electrical science — from electro-chem- 
istry, from electrical designing, from illuminating 
engineering. We have probably all seen the designer 
who can design, by the application of certain em- 
pirical rules, machinery whxh will work efficiently 
and satisfactorily so long as the machines are of 
standard type, but who becomes puzzled and unable 
to modify his formula for application to machines 
of a radically different type. The illuminating 
engineer may be trained to lay out properly an 
equipment for the satisfactory illumination of build- 
ings, yet his understanding of his work, and his 
success at it, would be greatly heightened by full 
understanding of the principles of radiation and 
absorption of colors, and of physiology. Endless 
illustrations of. this point could be offered to make 
clear what is meant, but perhaps those which have 
been given will suffice. 

The foregoing remarks indicate, I think, fully 
enough, what I should regard as the best method of 
training engineers. It would consist of at least three, 
and preferably four, years of training in a general 
course. In this course a student would study the 
great branches of human knowledge — literature, 
philosophy, economics, history, languages, physics, 
chemistry, and mathematics. He should study the 



CLASSICAL-SCIENTIFIC VS. PURELY TECHNICAL 71 

principles of these subjects in order to get a grasp 
of each; and especially should he study physics 
as physics, and chemistry as chemistry, and not as 
tools for the engineering profession. And then there 
should be superposed upon this fundamental train- 
ing a two-year rigorous technical course. By such 
training a student would be prepared thoroughly 
to carry on with maximum efficiency, and with 
maximum understanding and interest, the work of 
his professional school. He would come to his 
professional training with mature, trained mind, 
with deep realization of the seriousness of his work, 
and with greater purpose to do it all to best advan- 
tage. He would take up the work as a trained man 
instead of as a growing boy. The experience of 
twenty years has convinced me that this is the only 
method for training engineers. 



THE BASES OF ENGINEERING 
EDUCATION-LANGUAGE 



THE VALUE OF ENGLISH TO THE 
TECHNICAL MAN 

JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

[Among engineers there is increasing recognition of the im- 
portance of English in engineering practice. In connection 
with the following essay, Dr. Waddell and Mr. Harrington, the 
editors of Engineering Addresses^ remark that " Upon whether 
its teachings be followed or ignored may depend the success or 
failure of any technical student to attain in after life the highest 
rank in the engineering profession. Possessing a mastery of 
the English language, he may or may not rise to eminence; but 
without it he certainly cannot. Any engineering student who 
wilfully neglects the study of his own language deserves the fail- 
ure to attain eminence which assuredly will be his fate." The 
author, John Lyle Harrington (1868- ), a graduate of 
the University of Kansas and of McGill University, is a dis- 
tinguished engineer. As a member of the Elmira Bridge 
Corripany, of the Keystone Bridge Works, and of the Berlin 
Iron Bridges Company, he designed many of the heavy bridges 
of the continent. For some time also he was chief engineer 
and manager of the Locomotive and Machine Company of 
Montreal. At present he is a member of the firm of Harring- 
ton, Howard, and Ash. His essay, which first appeared in 
pamphlet form, is reprinted, by permission of the publishers, 
from Engineering Addresses.] 

Language is an instrument, a medium for the 
exchange of thought. If, in individual instances, 

75 



76 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

both speaker and hearer employ words in the same 
sense, and arrange them in the same manner, the 
expressed ideas will be perfectly understood, whether 
the language be in accordance with good usage or 
not. But if thought is to be conveyed without loss 
to a larger audience, the medium must be substan- 
tially perfect. Words must not only be used in 
accordance with their accustomed and generally 
accepted meanings, and with all the shades and 
niceties of those meanings, but they must be arranged 
in accordance with the accepted construction of 
phrase, clause, and sentence; and the whole argu- 
ment must be so ordered with regard to the sequence 
and the relations of the various ideas that the 
hearer shall be compelled to understand. Dis- 
courses in which thoughts, though they be ever so 
clearly expressed, are not arranged in logical order, 
will fail in their purpose, because the argument 
is confused, and the mind of the hearer is occupied 
with the language instead of the substance of the 
thought. You will recall Sam Weller's remark 
regarding Mr. Nupkins' eloquence that " his ideas 
come out so fast they knock each other's heads off 
and you can't tell what he is driving at." Like any 
other instrument, the value of language is in direct 
proportion to our knowledge of it and our skill in 
its use. If we understand it fully, and use it skill- 
fully, it will serve our purpose well; but if we are 
novices and bunglers, only disappointment will 
result. 



VALUE OF ENGLISH TO THE TECHNICAL MAN 77 

Language, though it will not supply the place of 
thought, is a most essential instrument to every man. 
To him who is without important thought to express 
it is not a very valuable tool. The laborer does not 
require it in handling the pick and shovel; it is only 
in his social relations that he has much need for 
speech. It is not important that the stoker speak 
fluently, or that the mechanic be an able orator or 
writer. But as we proceed from the lower to the 
higher and more intellectual occupations, the need 
and the value of knowledge and command of language 
rapidly increase. The politician, we sometimes think, 
makes skillful use of language to hide his thought 
or to dissemble. Indeed, in all walks of life there 
are times when words are well employed to obscure 
the thought. But the physician must be skillful 
in the use of language in order to direct and control 
his patients, as well as to write, and to understand 
the writings of his fellow physicians. The clergy- 
man needs it to please, to inform, to convince, and 
to persuade his auditors. The technical man, 
that is, the engineer, the architect, and the applied 
scientist of every kind, finds a sound, accurate knowl- 
edge of the language essential to him in every part 
of his work. A wide and precise knowledge of 
words is required in his reading as well as in his 
general writing; in his business and professional con- 
versations even more than in those of a social nature. 
In the preparation and interpretation of technical 
correspondence, specifications, and contracts, the 



78 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

use of perfect language reaches the highest degree of 
importance. The lawyer alone needs to be so much 
of a precisian, and he attains that end by very awk- 
ward and cumbersome means. 

The technical man of the highest order is not only 
a cultured gentleman, versed in all the amenities of 
polite society, familiar with the best literature in his 
own language and probably in that of one or two 
others, able to read many branches of learning 
understandingly and to discuss them intelligently; 
but, in addition, he has special knowledge of mathe- 
matics and the applied sciences, and he is not only 
able to understand what is written or spoken about 
them, but to express his own thought readily, accur- 
ately, and logically. The successful technical man, it 
has been well said, must know much about everything 
and everything about something, but his ideas and 
knowledge are of small value except in so far as he 
can convey them to others; for, since he does not 
often labor with his hands, he must instruct and 
direct those who do. Thus, language is his most 
important tool, and it certainly behooves him to see 
that it is always in good order. His reputation as a 
gentleman and as a professional man depends very 
largely upon his knowledge and use of English. 

Technical men are peculiarly prone to offend in the 
use of their mother tongue because they have not, 
as a rule, read deeply in literature nor studied the 
construction of the language. The technical man 



VALUE OF ENGLISH TO THE TECHNICAL MAN 79 

who has a thorough knowledge of English has had the 
wisdom and patience to supplement his technical 
education by an arts course, has read widely, or 
possesses the gift of speech. Long continued and 
intimate association with those who employ ex- 
cellent English will ensure reasonably good usage; 
in fact, such association is almost essential, no matter 
what the education may be; but the knowledge of 
the language so acquired generally breaks down when 
it is applied to technical matters in which extreme 
accuracy is a requisite, and in which the terms differ 
much from those used in ordinary conversation. 
There is no royal road to a knowledge of English. 

Some of our better universities are now offering 
a six years' course which combines the usual arts and 
technical courses, each of which ordinarily occupies 
four years, but which have many subjects in common. 
This is a decided step in the right direction; for 
technical men generally are coming into a more 
complete realization of their deficiencies, and are 
insisting that young technists be more liberally 
educated. The professional man does not always 
remain a technist; in fact, he frequently becomes a 
man of affairs as well, where a liberal education is 
even more essential than in his purely technical work. 

Before passing to a consideration of the specific 
advantages enjoyed by the technical man who uses 
good English, let us glance at some of the grosser 
faults of which so many are guilty; for there is no 
better way to attain a comprehension of the good 



80 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

than by contrasting it with the bad. It has been 
well said that it is no virtue to speak good Enghsh, 
but that it is a disgrace to use bad English. 

You will say that it is absurd to state that men who 
have graduated from college cannot spell correctly, 
but many of them cannot. S-e-d, said; -p-e-a-r, 
pier, are extreme but true examples. It is very 
common to find misspelled words in letters written 
by young engineers. They consider such errors of 
no material consequence because they are not 
technical errors. The mind has been so fixed upon 
the scientific work during the course of study, and 
while the early experience is being acquired, that such 
matters as language and culture seem to be of little 
importance. But the recipient of the letter generally 
takes a different view of the matter; for he justly 
considers the writer something of an ignoramus. 

Errors of spelling and punctuation are both due to 
unpardonable carelessness and ignorance; for any 
one can learn to spell and to pronounce correctly, 
and no man should be given a degree or a diploma 
by any institution of learning unless he does so 
habitually. 

Grossly bad grammar is also very common. It 
generally arises from carelessness in ordering the 
thought and speech rather than from lack of knowl- 
edge of correct usage, but it is frequently attributed 
to ignorance; and certainly the penalty is not too 
severe. In many instances, however, ignorance is 
the true cause of the error. The study of grammar 



VALUE OF ENGLISH TO THE TECHNICAL MAN 81 

commonly ceases when the student leaves the graded 
schools. Thereafter he assumes that his knowl- 
edge of the subject is full and complete, and that he 
need give it no further attention, notwithstanding 
the fact that his capacity for thought and the need 
of means for its expression continue to increase. 
His vocabulary grows; but his knowledge of the 
fundamental principles which govern its use not only 
does not expand as his needs require, but it is 
allowed to become uncertain and to diminish through 
lack of exercise. When the matter is thought of at 
all, it is assumed that in some vague, uncertain 
way habit will serve instead of knowledge and under- 
standing. The grammar is put away like other 
childish things. 

But the highest skill in the use of language is not 
attained when our v/ords are properly spelled or 
pronounced and our sentences formed in accordance 
with the rules of grammar. In fact, these are only 
bare and absolute essentials, the skeleton of our 
language which must still be provided with flesh 
and blood and nerves before it will live and fulfill 
its mission. The whole purpose for which language 
is employed is to impress our thought upon others 
in such a way that they shall feel or think or act as 
we desire. To attain this end it is essential that 
we make intelligent use of the arts of rhetoric and 
oratory, that we know the laws of composition, 
the methods of ordering and constructing our 
discourse so that it will lead the minds of our hearers 



82 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

wherever we wish, and not only convey our thought 
but induce our auditors to think along the Hnes that 
will benefit our purpose. 

It is deplorably rare to find young technical men 
in possession of an intimate knowledge of rhetoric. 
Business correspondence is often annoyingly pro- 
tracted because one or both of the parties conducting 
it ignores the simple law of unity, and fails to round 
out and complete the subject under discussion. 
Gross errors of composition are quite as frequent in 
the correspondence of the technically educated man 
as they are in that of the ordinary clerk who went 
to work when he left the grammar school. It is 
because engineers are so little accustomed to order 
their thought and language properly that they have 
so little part in the business and correspondence of 
the corporations which employ them. It is notori- 
ous that a technist is rarely a good business man. 
This is partly because of the exaggerated importance 
he gives to technical matters, but very largely because 
his thought is clumsily expressed and awkwardly 
ordered. 

The character of the technical man's language is 
important in his social and business intercourse; 
in his business and professional correspondence; 
in the promulgation of orders, rules, and regulations 
for the guidance of those under his direction; in the 
preparation of specifications, contracts, and reports; 
in writing and delivering addresses and technical 



VALUE OF ENGLISH TO THE TECHNICAL MAN 83 

papers; and in writing technical books for the 
advancement of his profession. 

In conversation, earnestness and force may, in 
some measure, counteract the evil influence of bad 
English; but since less care is commonly given to 
the spoken word than to the written, the results 
of bad habits of speech are much the same in either 
case; and in moments of special interest or excite- 
ment the habitual language is employed. Speech 
is usually heard but once; therefore its errors are 
much more likely to pass unnoticed than those which 
are written and may be read repeatedly; and the 
audience of the speaker is much more limited than 
that of the writer; therefore it would seem less 
important to speak correctly than to write correctly. 
But it must not be forgotten that in conversation 
there is no time, as a rule, to give thought to the form 
of speech; and that all the errors one is accustomed 
to make are likely to occur. The habit of using 
good English should be so firmly fixed that one is 
not conscious of it. 

A technical man is, presumably, an educated man; 
and if he does not speak like one, suspicion is cast 
upon the entire range of his learning. When a man 
cannot spell correctly, nor use ordinarily good gram- 
mar (and there are many university men who can- 
not), it is difficult to convince others that he is pro- 
fessionally able. The great majority of technical 
men occupy salaried positions in the organizations 
of railways, governments, constructing companies, 



84 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

and manufacturing corporations. These positions 
are obtained by means of acquaintances made in a 
social way, by interview, by correspondence, or on 
account of an earned reputation. Yet I have 
granted interviews to miany technical men who spoke 
like common laborers, and have received hundreds 
of letters from them that would be a disgrace to a 
grammar school student. There are technically 
educated men who say " I have saw," " I seen/' 
and " I done "; and there are men in high places who 
require no further proof of the speaker's ignorance, 
not only of English but of technical matters as well. 
One who is thus ignorant of the language finds 
social progress substantially impossible. This may 
seem a trivial matter and foreign to our purpose, 
but it is not. Matters of very large importance are 
often settled by favor, and favor frequently follows 
social position. Other things being equal, almost 
any one will show his friend the preference in business 
or professional matters. It is even common to 
stretch a point in favor of a friend. 

Language has large weight in classifying a man, 
infinitely more than manner or dress. It exhibits 
his breeding and indicates his social status. I do 
not mean that it shows whether he belongs to the 
so-called " Smart Set," but whether he is of the 
educated, cultured class, whether you would care to 
entertain him at all, and, if so, whether you would 
send him to your club, or whether you may extend 
the extreme courtesy of inviting him to your home. 



VALUE OF ENGLISH TO THE TECHNICAL MAN 85 

This may appear at first glance to be of small con- 
sequence; but great things often result from asso- 
ciations quickly formed. In fact, such social rela- 
tions make largely for success or failure in the busi- 
ness or professional world. Many have received 
the opportunity which led to eminence through the 
recommendation of a casual acquaintance who was 
favorably impressed. 

There are many vocations in which it is not essen- 
tial that a man be cultured and intelligent; but the 
technical professions are not among them. Nothing 
so surely marks a man's secret habits of thought, 
his real character, as the little tricks of speech which 
are exhibited v\^hen his mind is upon the matter 
rather than the manner of his speech. If his thought 
be habitually coarse, crude, or brutal, his speech 
will make the fact manifest at times; and the speech 
of a moment frequently produces a permanent and 
vital effect. 

In business correspondence the value of good usage 
is still more manifest than in conversation. A letter 
very probably passes through many hands and 
multiplies the good or bad impressions of the writer 
it produces. If its import is not clear, it may cause 
disagreement or involve the writer in a serious 
financial disadvantage. Even bad punctuation will 
often seriously alter the entire meaning of a sentence, 
and particularly bad grammar at once stamps the 
writer as an ignoramus. The art of letter writing, 
like a knowledge of grammar, is commonly considered 



86 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

to be within the range of everyone's learning and 
skill; but anyone who has had large experience in 
business correspondence knows that few men write 
good letters. It is so rare to find a matter which is 
composed of more than one or two items clearly, 
concisely, and thoroughly discussed in a letter that 
favorable attention is immediately attracted to its 
writer. Not a few men owe the opportunity for 
advancement to their ability to write a good letter. 
Even though one be thoroughly versed in his sub- 
ject, and his discourse be well worth the time and 
attention of men of affairs, bad grammar will cast 
such suspicion over his whole equipment of learning 
that his argument will often be put aside without 
substantial consideration. Bad grammar is not a 
bar to the acquisition of money, but it substantially 
prohibits attainment to high position in the scientific 
world. 

The detrimental results of bad English in con- 
versation or in correspondence are by no means so 
certain as in more formal technical papers. In the 
preparation of articles for the technical press, and 
papers for the learned societies, there is time to 
study form and style and to eliminate errors due to 
haste; hence, when such matters are ill written, it 
is not unfairly argued that the writer is ignorant of 
the correct use of the language. Such an opinion, 
widely disseminated, as it is likely to be when it 
originates thus, is exceedingly detrimental to the 
writer. It weakens his arguments, causes him to 



VALUE OF ENGLISH TO THE TECHNICAL MAN 87 



be misunderstood, or so detracts from the interest 
of his readers that the matter is not read. The 
idea that a technical paper is dry at best, and that 
the Enghsh employed in it is of small consequence, 
has long been proved incorrect. There is so much 
nowadays that is well written that no busy profes- 
sional man is willing to spare the extra time and 
effort necessary to read and digest an ill written 
paper. 

A merchant may advertise his wares, a manufac- 
turer his product, but reasonable modesty and his 
code of ethics prevent a professional man from ad- 
vertising his skill. If he does not become known 
by his work or his writings, he remains in compara- 
tive obscurity. His ability is clearly exposed in his 
writings, in which he gives to the profession his best 
thought; but if he cannot write easily and well, 
he will probably not write at all; for the censorship 
of the learned societies is now severe, and is rapidly 
growing more so. Every successful technical man 
desires to leave a permanent record of the results 
of his best thought and work to aid his co-workers 
and successors. An ably written description of work 
performed, discoveries made, or methods developed 
accomplishes more for the advancement of science 
than many well designed and well executed construc- 
tions. The latter benefit those who see them; the 
former may help all who can read. 

Provoking and expensive errors often arise from the 
misunderstanding of badly expressed orders, rules, 



88 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 



and regulations. In large corporations, especially 
in railway, contracting, and engineering companies, 
where employees are distributed over a wide area, 
it is impossible for an officer to give individual in- 
structions, or to see personally that they are carried 
out; hence, general instructions must be so clear 
that they cannot be misunderstood or evaded. It is 
hardly necessary to say that the consequences of a 
mistake in train orders, in instructions regarding 
breaking track for repairs or renewals, or for making 
temporary construction to span washouts, may 
result in expensive and fatal accidents. And even 
minor errors, oft repeated, may prove very costly. 

But the preparation of reports, specifications, and 
contracts is the most particular and momentous 
task the technical man has to perform. A misused 
word, a phrase whose meaning is ambiguous, a para- 
graph that is confused, or the omission of a direction 
or a precaution, may result in great damage to both 
the client and the technical man. It is not enough 
to be careful in a general way. Every word, every 
phrase, every sentence, has a direct and vital bearing 
on the work governed by the documents. I have 
known the presence in a contract of a single word 
of equivocal meaning to cost one of the parties many 
thousands of dollars, though when the contract was 
drawn there was no question regarding the intent 
of the parties to it. Probably the majority of the 
civil law suits are caused not by trickery nor deceit 
nor dishonesty, but by the use of ambiguous words 



VALUE OF ENGLISH TO THE TECHNICAL MAN 89 

and phrases, bad ordering of the matter, incom- 
pleteness, and other faults in the language of the 
correspondence, specifications, and contracts. There 
is no more certain way for the engineer to protect 
his own and his client's interests than to prepare all 
documents in accordance with the best English 
usage as well as with technical skill; and there is no 
surer way to lay the foundation for trouble and 
financial loss than to neglect the character of his 
language. 

Notwithstanding the vital importance of clear, 
concise, and full expression in such documents, it 
is not uncommon to find specifications and contracts 
so bad in their construction that they fail utterly 
in their purpose. Let me quote an illustration from 
the specifications, prepared by an architectural firm 
of some repute, for the construction of a building 
which cost nearly one hundred thousand dollars. 
I " Material and Workmanship. The entire frame 
work, columns, beams, etc., as indicated by the 
framing plans, or as specified, is to be of wrought 
steel, of quality hereinafter designated, all materials 
to be provided and put in place by this contractor. 
All work to be done in a neat and skillful manner, 
and is to guarantee the construction and workman- 
ship with a bond equal to amount of tender for a term 
of five years, satisfactory to the proprietor and archi- 
tects, to properly carry or support the loads it is 
designated to carry, namely its own weight, the 
weight of the several floors, roof and walls resting 



90 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

thereon, a 10,000 gravity tank, and the pressure of 
any wind which may not be designated a hurricane, 
and future three stories. The floor beams are to 
be calculated for a maximum load of 150 pounds 
to the square foot (using C type IV of the Clinton 
Fire-proof system, of Clinton, Mass.) The columns 
are to be calculated for a vertical load above men- 
tioned and for horizontals and wind pressure and 
snow pressure, also roof. The whole to be calcu- 
lated heavy enough for three additional stories on 
building should they be put on at any time, with 
connections at top columns to receive future columns. 
The columns on ground floor supporting front to be 
calculated in same proportion with all the rods neces- 
sary where shown. The whole of the columns to 
be one size throughout, those that carry more weight 
reinforced, and all columns to be kept as small as 
possible in proper construction. Each column to 
have |-inch holes bored or punched every 4 ft. 
6 in. in height on each corner (for use of other 
trades to fasten metal lath)." 

The building was constructed under these speci- 
fications, not according to them; that would be 
impossible. But it is hardly necessary to say that 
the proprietors were not safeguarded. The wretched 
paragraph quoted is no worse than a contractor 
finds in specifications almost every day; for it is 
composed, as a large number of engineers and archi- 
tects compose their specifications, by copying and 
combining sentences or paragraphs from various 



VALUE OF ENGLISH TO THE TECHNICAL MAN 91 

sources instead of by writing them from knowledge 
of the construction desired. In such instances the 
client is protected more by the honesty, knowledge, 
and skill of the contractor than by those of the 
architect. 

The lawyers and the courts are kept busy rectifying 
the blunders of other professional men who do ill 
what they are paid to do well. I know of one con- 
tractor, grown gray in the business of constructing 
buildings, who has never completed a contract with- 
out a lawsuit, and who has never lost a lawsuit. 
This fact speaks ill for the architects under whom 
he worked, yet they are probably no worse than their 
fellows. If it were not good policy to be reasonably 
honest, many another contractor might easily 
approach his record. 

It would appear that we have given more atten- 
tion to bad than to good English. This method is 
not illogical; for, manifestly, if the bad be eliminated, 
the good will remain; and if the evils arising from the 
abuse of the language be fully comprehended, there 
will be serious endeavor to improve the usage. The 
laws of the language are commonly violated from 
mere carelessness. Slang and provincialisms creep 
in, and destroy its force and elegance; the expression 
becomes slovenly and the thought obscure; and what 
constitutes good English is forgotten. 

Language itself is merely an instrument. The 
sole service English can render is to convey the speak- 



92 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

er's thought and purpose fully and accurately to 
the minds of his auditors. But this service alone 
will amply repay years of study and a life of care in 
and attention to the use of the Enghsh language. 



VI 

THE VALUE OF THE CLASSICS IN ENGI- 
NEERING EDUCATION 

CHARLES PROTEUS STEINMETZ 

[Though Mr. Harrington regards the study of English largely 
from a utiHtarian point of view, he does not overlook its cultural 
importance. The value of an acquaintance with the best in 
literature — a value which he merely suggests — is considered by 
Dr. Steinmetz (1865- ) in the following address; and though 
the latter limits his consideration to the classics of Greece and 
Rome, which few expect to see reinstated, what he says is ap- 
plicable to the masterpieces of the vernacular which take their 
readers into periods remote from theirs in temper and attainment. 
That his observations are not without authority must be obvious 
to all who are familiar with the facts of his career. Though these 
are generally known, it may not be out of place to recall that he 
was educated in Germany and Switzerland; that he is Professor 
of Electro-Physics in Union College, and that, as Consulting 
Engineer to the General Electric Company, he stands at the 
head of his profession. His books on electricity and mathe- 
matics have become standard. His miscellaneous essays have 
something of the same imaginative outlook. The extract below, 
which is the first part of an address delivered before various 
groups of engineers, is reprinted, by permission of the author 
and the editor of the Engineering Nezvs-Recordy from the Engi- 
neering Record of August 9, 1913. The title is that under which 
it appears in different form in the Proceedings and Transactions 
of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, of which 
Dr. Steinmetz is a past president. Several passages from this 
version are incorporated in the text.] 

For ages the classics, comprising the Greek and 
Latin languages and the literatures of those lan- 

93 



94 CHARLES PROTEUS STEINMETZ 

guages, have been the foundation of all education; 
but in the last two generations they have been more 
and more pushed into the background by the 
development of empirical science and its application, 
engineering. The flood tide of this tendency has 
just passed, and it is beginning to be realized that 
this narrow utilitarian training has been a failure. 
Few professional and business men with it have 
reached prominence in scientific and national life, 
and the urgent need of return to a broader educa- 
tion is becoming more evident from year to year. 

Ours is an age of science and engineering, of in- 
dustrial development and progress. The unfet- 
tering of human initiative and ability by the French 
Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century 
and the opening of the vast resources of our conti- 
nent gave opportunities which never existed before, 
and impatiently youth chafed against wasting time 
in education instead of " doing things " by grasping 
the opportunities. Fortunately for the intellectual 
progress of the race, these opportunities are gone, 
and intelligence and knowledge again are replacing 
chance and grasping. Education thus becomes the 
essential requirement in determining success in hfe. 

Education is not the learning of a trade or profes- 
sion, but the development of the intellect and the 
broadening of the mind afforded by a general 
knowledge of all subjects of interest to the human 
race. These enable a man to attack intelligently 
and solve problems in which no previous experience 



VALUE OF THE CLASSICS IN EDUCATION 95 

guides, and to decide the questions arising in his 
intellectual, social, and industrial life by impartially 
weighing the different factors and judging their 
relative importance. These problems — and thus 
the educational preparation required to cope with 
them — are practically the same in all walks of life, 
and the general education required by the engineer, 
the lawyer, and the physician is thus essentially the 
same. The only legitimate differences are those 
pertaining to the details of the particular branch of 
human knowledge by which the student desires to 
make his living. 

The amount of human knowledge has grown so 
vast that no single mind can master it all. That 
means that we must limit ourselves to a part, 
usually even a small part, of human knowledge — 
must specialize; and ours, therefore, has been called 
an age of specialists. It must be realized, however, 
that the value of the specialist in the social organism 
is in direct proportion to the general knowledge 
which he possesses. Special knowledge, no matter 
how extensive and intensive, is of very little value if 
not intelligently directed and applied. This requires 
broadness of view and common sense, which only 
a broad, general education can give, but which no 
special training supplies; special training rather 
tends to narrow the view and to hinder a man from 
taking his proper position as a useful member of 
society. Examples of this we can see all around us, 
especially in the business man, in the lawyer, and. 



96 CHARLES PROTEUS STEINMETZ 

more still, in the engineer, because the vocation of 
the engineer is especially liable to make a man one- 
sided. By dealing exclusively with empirical 
science and its applications the engineer is led to 
forget, or never to reaHze, that there are other 
branches of human thought besides empirical science 
equally important as factors in education and intel- 
lectual development. An introduction to these 
other fields is best and most quickly secured by the 
study of the classics, which open to the student 
worlds entirely different from the present — the world 
of art and literature, of Greece, and the world of 
organization and administration, of Rome — and so 
broaden his horizon and show relative values in 
their proper proportion and not distorted by the 
trend of thought of his time. 

There have always been educated and uneducated, 
skilled and unskilled workers. But with the develop- 
ment of modern industrialism a third class has 
arisen between the skilled and the unskilled, the 
educated and the uneducated — men trained to do 
one thing only, but to do this very well and efficiently. 
We call them pieceworkers when working for wages in 
the factory, specialists when receiving salaries as 
professional men. They are tools, useful when di- 
rected by somebody's intelligence, but useless to 
themselves and to the world otherwise. The product 
of many of our engineering schools and business 
colleges is of this character. Some of these men 
may become inteUigent and educated human beings 



VALUE OF THE CLASSICS IN EDUCATION 97 

and useful members of society afterward, it is true, 
but their schooling will not make them such. 

A skilled mechanic may finally specialize in one 
class of work, but that does not make him an un- 
skilled pieceworker. An engineer, physician, or 
other professional man may devote his time to one 
branch of his profession; but so long as he keeps up 
his interest in and his familiarity with his entire 
profession, and with all the problems of the work 
surrounding him, he has not yet deteriorated into 
a specialist. 

The greatest problem before the educational world 
to-day is the method of broadening education to 
counteract the narrowing tendency of modern life 
and modern industrialism, and to produce the in- 
tellectual development and broadening of the mind 
which create not merely intellectual machines, 
but citizens capable of taking their proper place in 
the industrial and social life of the nation — men who 
can be trusted to direct the destinies of the Republic 
during the stormy times of industrial and social 
reorganization which are before us. 

Modern society is dominated by industrialism, 
the outgrowth of applied science; that is, by engi- 
neering. The entire world has been unified, and 
whether we travel through the European countries, 
or see the civilizations of the Far East, we find 
no material differences from the intellectual and social 
conceptions of our country. Thus the broadening 
effect of the study of other nations and countries 



98 CHARLES PROTEUS STEINMETZ 

has largely vanished. Wherever we go, we meet 
similar conditions — the same scientific and religious 
beliefs, the same organization of society — and we are 
very liable to draw the conclusion that our condi- 
tions, our beliefs, our form of society, are the best 
and the only feasible ones; that civilization could 
not exist without them, and that any radical change 
would be destructive to civilization. But self- 
satisfaction means stagnation, and stagnation means 
decay; and herein lies the foremost danger of our 
civilization. 

The remedy is knowledge of and familiarity with 
another civilization, different from ours in character, 
superior in some respects, inferior in others. 

Nobody familiar with Greece in its prime can ever 
believe that the highest development of art, science, 
and literature which the world has seen cannot exist 
in the freest form of democracy — a democracy so 
free and unrestrained as to be almost anarchism. 
Nobody familiar with the Alexandrian Period can 
deny that science can flourish under an autocratic 
monarchy. A purely communistic nation held 
Greece for centuries. For centuries the centralized 
federal government of Rome maintained the peace 
and guarded the civilization of the entire civilized 
world, and many countries under Rome's dominion 
enjoyed a civilization which they had never reached 
before. 

It is this difference of the ancient civihzation from 
the present which makes the study of the classics of 



VALUE OF THE CLASSICS IN EDUCATION 99 

importance and almost of necessity in order to 
counteract the equalizing and leveling tendency 
exerted by present-day conditions and to give the 
broadening which is the most important object of 
education. 



MATHEMATICS 



VII 

THE PLACE OF MATHEMATICS IN ENGI- 
NEERING PRACTICE 

SIR WILLIAM HENRY WHITE 

[Through scholarship and practice Sir WiUiam Henry White 
(1845-1913) was admirably quaHfied to discuss the relations 
between mathematics and engineering. As a professor in the 
Royal School of Naval Architecture and the Royal Naval Col- 
lege, he helped to shape recent theories of marine construction. 
As an engineer, however, his influence was even more notable. 
While head of the shipbuilding department of Armstrong, 
Mitchell, and Company he designed the Takachiho for Japan 
and the Charlestown for the United States, introducing many 
improvements over the older cruiser types. On becoming Direc- 
tor of Naval Construction, a position which he occupied for 
seventeen years, he developed the battleship types which were 
standard in most navies during the last twenty years of his life. 
Nor were his activities limited to men-of-war; for it was largely 
through his efforts that turbines were adopted on large passenger 
ships. Among the 250 vessels which he designed and constructed 
is the giant Mauretania. Sir William was not only teacher and 
practitioner, but also author of several valuable monographs. 
The following address, delivered before the Fifth International 
Congress of Mathematicians, is reprinted, by permission of the 
editor, from NaturSy September 19, 191 2.] 

The foundations of modern engineering have been 
laid on mathematics and physical science; the prac- 
tice of engineering is now governed by scientific 

103 



104 SIR WILLIA^I HEXRY WrEHTE 

methods applied to the analysis of experience and 
the results of experimental research. Engineering 
has been defined as " the art of directing the great 
sources of power in Nature for the use and con- 
venience of man." An adequate acquaintance with 
the laws of Nature, and obedience to those laws, 
are essential to the full utilization of these sources of 
power. It is now universally recognized that the 
educated engineer must possess a knowledge of the 
sciences which bear upon his professional duties 
as well as thorough practical training and experi- 
ence in actual engineering work. Of these sciences 
the mathematical is undoubtedly of the greatest 
importance. The range and character of mathe- 
matical knowledge which can be considered adequate 
are gradually being agreed upon as experience is 
enlarged; and present ideas are embodied in the 
course of study prescribed in the calendars of 
schools of engineering. 

The preponderance of opinion amongst engineers 
now favors the teaching of science in general, and 
of mathematics in particular, on lines which shall 
ensure greater breadth of view and fuller capability 
for dealing with new problems arising in professional 
work. Whatever branch of engineering a man may 
select for his individual practice, he must have 
a fundamental knowledge of mathematics; and in 
some branches, in order to do his work well, he will 
have to add considerably to the mathematical knowl- 
edge which is sufficient for a degree. 



PLACE OF MATHEMATICS IN PRACTICE 105 

As time passes, the mathematician and the practi- 
cing engineer have come to understand each other 
better, and to be mutually helpful. While engineers 
as a class cannot claim to have made many important 
or original contributions to mathematical science, 
some men trained as engineers have done notable 
work of a mathematical character. The names of 
Rankine, William Froude, and John Hopkinson 
among British engineers hold an honored place 
in mathematics. Mathematicians of eminence have 
spent their lives in the tuition of engineers, and in 
that way have greatly influenced the practice of 
engineering; but while they have necessarily become 
familiar with the problems of engineering as a 
consequence of their connection with it, they have 
not accomplished much actual engineering work, 
and none of it has been of first importance. Broadly, 
there is an abiding distinction between mathe- 
maticians and engineers. Mathematicians regard 
engineering chiefly from the scientific point of view, 
and are primarily concerned with the bearing of 
mathematics on engineering practice, the con- 
struction of theories, and the framing of useful 
rules. Engineers, even when well equipped with 
mathematical knowledge, are primarily devoted to 
the design and construction of efl&cient and durable 
works, their main object being to secure the best 
possible association of efl&ciency and economy, and so 
to achieve practical and commercial success. There 
is evidently room for both classes; and their collabo- 



106 SIR WILLIAM HENRY WHITE 

ration in modern times has produced wonderful 
results. 

The proper use of mathematics in engineering 
practice is now generally agreed to include the 
development of a mathematical theory based on 
assumptions which are thought to embody and to 
represent conditions disclosed by past practice and 
observation. Frequently these theoretical investi- 
gations give rise to valuable suggestions for further 
observation or experimental investigations. Useful 
rules are also devised, in many instances, which 
serve for guidance in the future practice of engineers. 
Formerly it was thought by men of science that 
purely mathematical investigation and reasoning 
would do all that was required for the guidance of 
engineering practice. It is now admitted that such 
investigations will not suffice, and that the chief 
services which can be rendered to engineering by 
mathematicians consist in the suggestion of the best 
directions and methods for experimental research, 
the conduct of observations on the behavior of exist- 
ing works, the establishment of general principles 
based on analysis of experience, and the framing 
of practical rules embodying scientific principles. 

The contrast between present and past methods 
can be illustrated by comparing investigations made 
during the eighteenth century into the behavior 
of ships amongst waves by Daniel Bernoulli, who won 
the prize offered by the Royal French Academy of 
Science in 1757, and work done by William Froude 



PLACE OF MATHEMATICS IN PRACTICE 107 

a century later in connection with the same sub- 
jects. Bernoulli was the greater mathematician, 
but had only a small knowledge of the sea and of 
ships. His memoir was a mathematical treatise; 
his practical rules, although deduced from mathe- 
matical investigations which were themselves cor- 
rect, depended upon certain fundamental assump- 
tions which did not correctly represent either the 
phenomena of wave motion or the causes producing 
and limiting the rolling oscillations of ships. Ber- 
noulli realized and dwelt upon the need for further 
experiment and observation, and showed remarkable 
insight into what was needed; but the fact remains 
that he neither made such experiments himself nor 
was able to induce others to make them. As a 
consequence his practical rules for the guidance of 
naval architects were incorrect, and would have 
produced mischievous results if they had been applied 
in practice. 

William Froude was a trained engineer who had a 
good knowledge of mathematics and a mathematical 
mind. His acquaintance with the sea and ships 
was considerable, his skill as an experimentalist 
was remarkable, and he was fortunate enough to 
secure the support of the Admiralty through the 
Constructive Department. He thus obtained the 
services of the officers of the Royal Navy in making 
a long series of accurate and detailed observations 
of the characteristic features of ocean waves as well 
as of the rolling ships amongst them. In this way, 



108 SIR WILLIAIM HENRY WHITE 

Starting with the formulation of a mathematical 
theory of wave motion, Froude added corrections 
based on experimental research, and succeeded even- 
tually in devising methods by means of which 
naval architects can make close approximations to 
the probable behavior of ships of new design. In 
these approximations allowance can be made for the 
effect of water resistance to the rolling motion — a 
most important factor in the problem which could not 
be dealt with until experimental research had been 
made, and results had been subjected to mathe- 
matical analysis. In addition, Froude laid down 
certain practical rules for the guidance of naval 
architects, and the application of these rules has 
been shown by long experience to favor the steadi- 
ness — that is, the comparative freedom from roll- 
ing — of ships designed in accordance with them. In 
short, a problem which had proved too difficult 
when attacked by Daniel Bernoulli in purely mathe- 
matical fashion was solved a century later by 
Froude, who employed a combination of mathe- 
matical treatment and experimental research. 

Another example of the contrast between earlier 
and present methods is to be found in the treatment 
of the resistance ofFered by water to the onward 
motion of ships. At an early date mathematicians 
were attracted to this subject, and many attempts 
were made to frame mathematical theories. When 
steam propulsion for ships was introduced, the 
matter became of great practical importance because 



PLACE OF MATHEMATICS IN PRACTICE 109 

it was necessary to make estimates for the engine 
power required to drive a ship at the desired speed. 
In making such estimates it was necessary to ap- 
proximate to the value of the water resistance at 
that speed, although the required engine power 
was also influenced by the efficiency of the propelling 
apparatus and propellers. In addition, it was ob- 
vious that the water resistance to the motion of a 
ship when she was driven by her propellers at a given 
speed would be in excess of the resistance experi- 
enced if she were towed at the same speed, and there 
was no exact knowledge in regard to that increment 
of resistance. The earlier mathematical theories 
of resistance proved to be of little or no service, and 
they were based on erroneous and incomplete 
assumptions. Rankine devised a " stream-line " 
theory which was superior to its predecessors, but it 
also for a time had no effect on the practice of naval 
architects. William Froude, adopting this stream- 
line theory, dealt separately with frictional resist- 
ance, and devised a " law of comparison " at corre- 
sponding speeds by which from the " residual resist- 
ance " of models — exclusive of friction — it became 
possible to estimate the corresponding residual resist- 
ance for ships of similar forms. At first he stood 
alone in advocating these views, but subsequent 
experience during forty years has demonstrated 
their soundness. 

Experimental tanks for testing models of ships, 
such as Froude introduced, are now established in all 



110 SIR WTLLIAM HEXRY W^EHTE 

maritime countries, and the results obtained from 
them are of enormous value in the designing of 
steamships. In regard to the selection of the forms 
of ships, naval architects are now able to proceed 
with practical certainty; but in the design of screw 
propellers, even after model experiments have been 
made with alternative forms of screws, there is still 
great uncertainty, and dependence upon the results 
obtained on " progressive " speed trials of ships is 
still of the greatest service. As yet the " law of 
comparison " between model screws and full-sized 
screws has not been determined accurately. The 
condition of the water in which screws act, as 
influenced by the advance of a ship and her frictional 
wake, the phenomena attending the passage of the 
water through a screw, and the impression on it 
of sternward motion from which results the thrust 
of the propeller, the effect upon that thrust of varia- 
tions in the forms and areas of the blades of screw 
propellers, and the causes of "cavitation" — all form 
subjects demanding further investigation. In these 
cases the only hope of finding solutions lies in the 
association of experimental research with mathe- 
matical analysis. There have been very many 
mathematical theories of the action of screw pro- 
pellers, but none of these have provided the means 
for dealing practically with the problems of propeller 
design, and there is no hope that any purely mathe- 
matical investigation ever will do so, because the 
conditions which should be included in the funda- 



PLACE OF MATHEMATICS IN PRACTICE 111 

mental equations are complex and to a great extent 
undetermined. 

In connection with other branches of engineering, 
model experiments have also proved effective. Ex- 
amples are to be found in connection with the esti- 
mates for wind pressure on complicated engineering 
structures such as girder or cantilever bridges. Ex- 
perimental methods are also being applied with great 
advantage to the study of aeronautics and the prob- 
lems of flight. 

The association of the mathematical analysis of 
past experience with designs for new engineering 
works of all kinds is both necessary and fruitful 
of benefits. A striking example of this procedure is 
to be found in connection with the structural arrange- 
ments of ships of unprecedented size, which have to 
be propelled at high speeds through the roughest 
seas, to carry heavy loads, to be exposed to great 
and rapid changes in the distribution of weight 
and buoyancy, and to be subjected simultaneously 
to rolling, pitching, and heavy motion, as well as to 
blows of the sea. In such a case purely mathematical 
investigation would be useless; the scientific inter- 
pretation of past experience and the comparison of 
results of calculations based on reasonable hypotheses 
for ships which have seen service with similar results 
of calculations for ships of new design are the only 
means which can furnish guidance. 

In the past the association of mathematicians and 
engineers has done much towards securing remark- 



112 SIR WILLIAM HENRY WHITE 

able advances in engineering practice; and in the 
future it may be anticipated that still greater 
results will be attained now that the true place 
of mathematicians in that practice is better under- 
stood. 



VIII 

ON THE RELATION OF MATHEMATICS TO 
ENGINEERING 

ARTHUR RANUM 

[With Sir William White's address on the place of mathe- 
matics in engineering practice it is interesting to contrast Pro- 
fessor Ranum's essay on the same subject, which is reprinted, 
by permission of the author and editor, from the Sibley Journal 
of Engineeringy January, 1914. Arthur Ranum (1870- ) was 
educated at the University of Minnesota, at Cornell University, 
and at the University of Chicago. He has taught mathematics 
in the University of Washington, in the University of Wiscon- 
sin, in the Leland Stanford, Jr. University, and in Cornell 
University. It is not surprising, then, that his attitude should 
be conditioned by the academic ideal, and that he should revert 
to the necessity of mathematics for its own sake.] 

How can we reconcile the fact that many a suc- 
cessful engineer uses very little mathematics in his 
work with the further well-known fact that the pro- 
fession of engineering rests to a large extent on a 
mathematical foundation? This question has many 
phases, one of which we can answer by pointing out 
that there is a vast difference between developing 
the mathematical theory that applies to an engineer- 
ing problem and merely making use of the theory 
after it has been developed and put in tabular form 

113 



114 ARTHUR RANUM 



by someone else. The latter process does not require 
very high mathematical attainments, but is sufficient 
for many practical purposes. In order to gain more 
light, however, on this and other similar questions, 
let us try, if possible, to determine precisely what 
contributions mathematics has made to engineering; 
by looking back into the past, perhaps we shall dis- 
cover some general law that will enable us to peer 
a little into the future. 

Engineering has been defined as the art of directing 
the great sources of power in Nature for the use and 
convenience of man. Now power implies energy, 
force, motion. Modern science has shown that 
all the phenomena of Nature, including heat, light, 
and electricity, are manifestations of energy, modes 
of motion. In order to direct the forces of Nature, 
we must know how they act, we must understand 
the laws underlying the different kinds of motion, 
molecular as well as molar. Mechanics is then 
the fundamental science on which engineering 
depends. The other branches of physics reduce, in 
the last analysis, to mechanics. Now in the case 
of a moving body, molecule, or electron the first 
thing we want to know is its velocity, and the 
next is its acceleration. Both of these are rates of 
change or derivatives. Hence it is the most natural 
thing in the world to introduce the calculus into 
mechanics. The mathematical notion of a deriva- 
tive is not something imposed upon mechanics from 
without; it belongs to the very essence oi the 



ON THE RELATION OF MATHEMATICS 115 

science. Every waterfall, every bird on the wing, 
every ray of sunlight, every flash of lightning, 
when interpreted in mechanical terms, speaks the 
language of the calculus. 

We must guard, however, against the error of sup- 
posing that mathematics can furnish us with any 
of the facts on which the laws governing physical 
phenomena are based. These facts can be found 
only by observation and experiment. But when once 
a precise physical law has been discovered, the func- 
tion of mathematics is, first, to provide it with a 
language adequate to express all its complex and 
delicate content, and, second, to interpret its 
hidden meaning and derive the consequences that 
flow from it when the other known physical laws 
are taken into account. This means that the 
mathematician builds on the given foundation of 
experimental laws a logical structure, which often 
contains new theorems of far greater physical signif- 
icance than the original ones from which they are 
derived. It is in this sense that mathematics has 
been described as the master-key that unlocks the 
secrets of Nature. 

Sometimes, moreover, a mathematical develop- 
ment of this kind leads in the most unexpected 
fashion to important practical applications. The 
delicate and exhaustive experiments and far-reaching 
generalizations of the physicist, the profound and 
searching analysis and rigorous thinking of the 
mathematician, the ingenious and practical resource- 



116 ARTHUR RANUM 



fulness of the inventor, are all three necessary factors 
in the progress of engineering. The influence of the 
last of these, the inventor, although more direct and 
easily understood than the others, is not therefore 
necessarily the most important. On the contrary, 
his work is often a mere corollary of the scientific 
research which has prepared the way for him. The 
history of science furnishes countless illustrations 
of this. The development of electricity in general, 
and the discovery of wireless telegraphy in particular, 
are striking examples, which I cannot describe better 
than by quoting from Whitehead's recent Introduc- 
tion to Mathematics. 

** The momentous laws of electric induction were 
discovered by Michael Faraday in 1831-32. Fara- 
day was asked: * What is the use of this discovery? ' 
He answered: * What is the use of a child — it grows 
to be a man.' Faraday's child has grown to be a 
man, and is now the basis of all the modern applica- 
tions of electricity. . . . His ideas were extended 
and put into a directly mathematical form by 
Clerk Maxwell in 1873. As a result of his mathe- 
matical investigations. Maxwell recognized that 
under certain conditions electric vibrations ought to 
be propagated. He at once suggested that the 
vibrations which form light are electrical. This 
suggestion has since been verified; so that now the 
whole theory of light is nothing but a branch of the 
great science of electricity. Also Herz, a German, 
in 1888, following on Maxwell's ideas, succeeded in 



ON THE RELATION OF MATHEMATICS 117 

producing electric vibrations by direct electrical 
methods. His experiments are the basis of our 
wireless telegraphy." 

We shall appreciate the important place which 
mathematics occupies in practical affairs if we try 
to imagine what would happen if all the contribu- 
tions which mathematics has made, and which noth- 
ing else could make to the progress of engineering, 
were suddenly withdrawn. The result would ob- 
viously be terrific; it would mean nothing less 
than the total collapse of all industry and commerce, 
and indeed the complete annihilation of all the 
external evidences of our material civilization. 

" But why," asks the practical man, " do mathe- 
maticians and physicists concern themselves so much 
about certain fields of research which can never, in 
all likelihood, lead to practical results? " Two good 
reasons can be given. First of all, truth is one and 
indivisible; every part of the structure of truth 
has some bearing on every other part. Sometimes 
the most theoretical investigation is nearest to the 
most practical application. Nothing could at first 
have seemed further removed from the concerns 
of our daily life than the study of the radiant energy 
connected with Crooke's tubes, on the one hand, 
or the use of the so-called imaginary numbers, 
on the other; and yet look at the practical value 
of X-rays and of alternating currents, the latter 
depending essentially on these same imaginary 
numbers. 



118 .\RTHUR RANUM 

Moreover, certain branches of mathematics are 
no less important because their influence is indirect. 
In order to gain a thorough understanding of alter- 
nating currents, we must study the properties of 
Fourier's series; and to understand Fourier's series, 
we must study the theory of functions and of differ- 
ential equations. These latter, again, depend on 
various other disciplines like the theory of equations 
and the theory of groups. We can never know too 
much about the space in which we live; hence the 
practical value of the modern developments of 
geometry, projective and metrical, analytic and 
synthetic, algebraic and differential, Euclidean and 
non-Euclidean, and even n-dimensional — because 
from one important point of view our ordinary space 
is four-dimensional. 

But a more fundamental reason why truth should 
be pursued for its own sake is the simple fact that 
man is endowed with a divine curiosity, a desire to 
penetrate the secrets of Nature. He wants to 
understand, among other things, the outer physical 
universe in which he is immersed, and also the inner 
universe of logical thought revealed by mathe- 
matics. Are not the wonders of non-Euclidean 
geometry and non-Newtonian mechanics sufficiently 
valuable in themselves without any reference to 
their practical bearing? The recent discovery that 
the atom, formerly thought to be indivisible, is 
really a complete world in itself, a sort of solar 
system, so to speak, is surely of immense interest 



ON THE RELATION OF MATHEMATICS 119 

to every thinking person, merely as affording a 
glimpse into one of the hidden recesses of truth. 

Although the sciences of mathematics and physics 
are very closely related, they have not always kept 
perfect step with one another in their development. 
This fact is due partly to insuperable difficulties on 
the one side or the other, and partly to an unfor- 
tunate lack of cooperation between mathematicians 
and physicists. For instance, the physicist has 
sometimes come to the mathematician for the solu- 
tion of a problem, but has been compelled to wait 
a long time for the proper theory to be developed. 
A classic instance is the problem of three bodies 
in astronomy, which still awaits a general solution, 
although an enormous amount of labor has been 
expended on it, and particular solutions for various 
special cases are constantly being discovered. Many 
other physical problems could be cited which re- 
semble this in the fact that they lead to differential 
equations whose solutions cannot be found except 
in terms of new transcendental functions whose 
properties have not yet been investigated. 

More often, however, the mathematician develops 
a body of doctrine, and only after a long interval 
does it turn out to have important applications to 
physics or engineering. The pure mathematics of 
one epoch becomes the applied mathematics of a 
later epoch. MaxwelFs theory of electricity, before 
referred to, is a case in point; the mathematics 
he used depends essentially on principles which 



120 ARTHUR RANUM 

had been known for a long time. The discovery 
of the calculus was due to the attempt to find the 
lengths and areas of curves; later its immense sig- 
nificance in the science of mechanics was realized. 
The conic sections were investigated by the Greeks 
over two thousand years ago; and even to-day 
we are constantly finding fresh uses for them. 
Logarithms were discovered three hundred years 
ago; and the logarithmic function (or the com- 
pound interest law) now proves to be one of the 
commonest and most important laws governing 
the phenomena of Nature. The elHptic functions 
were first invented as pure mathematics, and then 
applied to the motion of the pendulum and other 
physical problem.s. The theory of groups has found 
a most unexpected application to the problem of 
determining the diflFerent types of crystal struc- 
ture. Very recently the principle of relativity has 
appeared on the scene and threatens to revolu- 
tionize the science of mechanics; but its natural 
geometric interpretation turns out to be a non- 
Euclidean geometry that has been known for thirty 
years or more. 

The history of Fourier's series is a fine illustra- 
tion of the mutual dependence of mathematics and 
physics. Originally due to the solution of a prob- 
lem in the flow of heat, it soon acquired a position 
of capital importance in pure mathematics as the 
general expression for a simply periodic function. 
But since periodicity is a well-nigh universal law 



ON THE RELATION OF MATHEMATICS 121 

of Nature, Fourier's series soon returned to the 
physical camp, where it now serves as the appro- 
priate vehicle for expressing a large number of 
different kinds of periodic motion, including sound 
waves and alternating currents. 

Can we make any prediction as to the future 
prospects of engineering? If progress continues 
along the lines followed in the past, one thing, at 
least, we can foresee with great confidence — the 
pure and applied mathematics of to-day, with its 
enormous and ever-growing body of splendid achieve- 
ments, will surely lead, sooner or later, to a variety 
of practical applications and new inventions that 
will startle the world. The material and utilitarian 
progress of to-morrow will depend largely on the 
scientific progress of to-day. Moreover, the in- 
creasing demand for accuracy and efiiciency in 
engineering can be met only by broadening and 
strengthening its mathematical foundations. Many 
an engineering student of to-day will live to see the 
time when those engineers who are leaders in their 
profession, who are capable of meeting novel con- 
ditions where originality of thought and action 
are required, will be men who are better equipped 
on the scientific side than we think necessary to- 
day; they will be men who are thoroughly trained 
in the use of many of the higher branches of what 
we now call pure mathematics. 



PHYSICS 



IX 

THE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICS TO THE 

ENGINEER 

MATTHEW ALBERT HUNTER 

[The two points of view from which Professor Ranum ap- 
proaches the subject of mathematics are adopted by Professor 
Hunter in his consideration of the importance of physics to the 
engineer. Matthew Albert Hunter (1878- ) was educated 
in the University of New Zealand and, under Sir William 
Ramsay, in the University of London. For several years he 
was engaged in the research laboratories of the General Electric 
Company. Since 1910 he has been Professor of Electrochem- 
istry in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His chief inves- 
tigations have been connected with the metallurgy of titanium 
and the electrical resistances of alloys.] 

The science of physics is beyond doubt the oldest 
of the exact sciences. From the earliest period, 
the dependence of man on the physical universe 
brought him into contact with the forces of Nature. 
It is not improbable, then, that in the process of 
evolution his thoughts were directed from the first 
towards the relation of the individual to his sur- 
roundings. The effects of rain and sunshine, of 
heat and cold, and of other physical phenomena 
thus came under his observation. 

125 



126 MATTHEW ALBERT HUNTER 

From these elementary considerations it is a far 
step to the records of histor}-. Throughout the pre- 
historic period, however, the facts of Nature were 
observed so continually that the earliest records 
contain much information that might have served 
as the basis of physical science. 

Nevertheless, the dawn of the modern era began 
only with Galileo. In his day physical science 
dropped the mantle of mysticism with which it 
had been wrapped. When the human mind first 
conceived the idea that natural phenomena cannot 
be referred to occult principles, but must be explained 
by reference to certain physical laws, the first step 
was taken in the evolution of the modern scientific 
spirit. Henceforth physical science was no longer 
subjective; it became experimental. 

Theories may be evolved to explain the facts of 
Nature. Always, however, these theories must be 
tested by experiment. A theory first presents itself 
only as a working hypothesis. When the hypothesis 
has stood the test of experiment, it is invested with 
the sanction of natural law. By this experimental 
method the modern science of physics has been 
developed. As a result we now possess a fund of 
accumulated evidence — correlated, clarified, and 
simplified — which serves to explain the phenomena 
of experience and to aid in future discoveries. 

This accumulation of experience forms the basis 
of education. We must not suppose, however, that 
the mind is to become a storehouse of fact, or an 



THE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICS 127 

encyclopaedia of information. Where this is so, 
the significance of education has been missed. 
In his studies the student must acquire clearness 
of thought and independence of action. Indeed, 
if choice must be made between fact and ability 
to think, the latter will prove of greater value. He 
alone is truly educated who can use the facts of 
experience as a guide to direct his thoughts and 
to determine his actions. From this point of view 
the science of physics may be regarded as one of 
the essentials of education. 

It is clear that all branches of experimental 
science had their origin in physics. Chemistry and 
medicine, astronomy and geology, are all offshoots 
from the parent stem. To-day, however, the science 
is restricted to a consideration of the phenomena of 
mechanics, heat, sound, light, and electricity. It 
deals essentially with the relations between the 
various forms of energy and the various forms of 
matter. In discussing the importance of physics 
to the engineer, let us analyze the value of these 
branches of physics individually and collectively in 
his education. 

We may approach the subject from the two 
angles indicated, considering the question, first, 
from a purely utilitarian, and, second, from a purely 
intellectual point of view. 

The utilitarian value of the different branches of 
physics is obvious. Statics and dynamics form an 



128 MATTHEW ALBERT HUNTER 

essential foundation for the civil engineer, elec- 
tricity is essential to the electrical engineer, but 
even from the point of view of utility it would 
be unwise to confine the studies of the civil engineer 
to the former, or of the electrical engineer to the 
latter. Both these fields have interlocking interests. 
In his daily occupation the civil engineer is not 
confined to subjects which are peculiar to civil 
engineering. The electrical engineer has contributed 
much that is useful to the profession of civil engi- 
neering, and for this reason the civil engineer should 
seek a working acquaintance with the facts of 
electrical engineering. And what has been said of 
civil and electrical engineering applies in like degree 
to all other branches of engineering. 

It is sometimes difficult for the student of 
applied science to realize the importance of the 
study of sound. Yet in some fields it is of great 
value. A study of the propagation of sound waves 
forms a stepping stone to the study of the propa- 
gation of waves of radiant energy, whether of heat, 
or light, or electricity. The principle of resonance, 
so easily understood in sound, has been extended 
with notable results to the study of telephone and 
radio engineering. A study of harmonics in vibra- 
ting systems has proved of vast importance to the 
electrical engineer in the study of alternating current. 

For this reason, then, it is not sufficient for the 
student to consider that part of physics which 
deals with his particular subject alone. The founda- 



THE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICS 129 



tion for a course of study in any branch of engi- 
neering should be laid by a course in all the sub- 
divisions of physics which are recognized as the 
bases of the separate branches of engineering. 

In considering next the intellectual value of 
physics, we enter upon a subject which is of even 
greater importance than the utilitarian aspect which 
we have just considered. It has been said that 
the value of a college education lies in what remains 
after everything that has been learned in college 
has been forgotten. There is considerable truth 
in this curious paradox. The habit of study, the 
power of concentration, the practice of thought, 
and the confidence which comes from independence 
in concept and action, — all these are as invaluable 
in engineering as in other walks of life. 

Now, the study of physics leads to the develop- 
ment of these qualities in a remarkable degree. 
Next to mathematics, physics is probably the most 
exacting of all the sciences. Among the experimental 
sciences it stands preeminent. Experimentally, it 
calls in large measure for dexterity in manipulation 
and accuracy in observation. The deductions drawn 
from experiments give a valuable training in clear 
and rigorous thinking. 

To paraphrase the paradox cited: If at the 
end of a course in physics a student forgets the 
facts, he will still be rewarded for the time which 
he has spent. The facility obtained by experimental 



130 MATTHEW ALBERT HUNTER 



manipulation, the habit of clear, logical thought, 
and the power of deduction which he has acquired 
are valuable assets. 

Another aspect of the question must still be 
considered. No field of engineering remains sta- 
tionary. Each succeeding generation of engineers 
pushes the boundaries of knowledge forward into 
the unknown. This spirit of research, seeking to 
extend the old, or to discover the new, is a powerful 
influence in modern engineering. The initial stage 
in this research is carried on in laboratories devoted 
to pure science. It cannot be denied that the 
laboratory practice in pure science of to-day is 
the engineering practice of to-morrow. To take 
but two examples. The observation of Seebeck in 
1822 of the electromotive force developed by heat 
at the junction of two dissimilar metals has given 
rise to an excellent system of pyrometric measure- 
ment. The experiments of Faraday in 1831 on 
electromagnetic induction form the basis of modern 
practice in electrodynamics. The ultimate utility 
of any discovery cannot be immediately gauged. 
Its potentialities, however, are always great; and 
here lies the value of research in engineering. 

It is easy to follow. To blaze a trail into the 
unknown requires knowledge of what lies behind 
and insight into what lies beyond. Success in re- 
search comes seldom from the accidental stumblings 
of the uneducated. More often it is attained by 



THE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICS 131 



those whose education has been laid on the firm 
foundations of the science on which all engineering 
is based. 

But progress in any specific field does not come 
always from within the field itself. However firm 
may be one's foundation in any branch of engi- 
neering, one's vision should reach beyond. To this 
end a knowledge of all branches of physics is abso- 
lutely necessary. 

This relation between physics and engineering 
can be easily exemplified. The principles involved 
in the kinetic theory of matter would seem at first 
sight to have little interest for the civil engineer. 
Yet based on this theory is much of our knowledge 
of molecular mechanics, of great value in the con- 
sideration of the elasticity and strength of materials. 
Again, the microscope has been called to aid the 
engineer. Through it has been formulated the new 
science of metallography, which forms a valuable 
adjunct to the information needed in structural 
development. 

The abstract theory of surface tension and capil- 
larity would seem to have little relation to engi- 
neering progress. Yet on these phenomena is based 
the flotation of minerals, one of the greatest advances 
in metallurgy during the last decade. In this case, 
however, practice has outrun theory. We still re- 
quire explanations of many such phenomena. 

The principles of osmosis and dialysis were first 
developed as physical phenomena. To-day they 



132 MATTHEW ALBERT HUNTER 

Stand as the bases of colloid chemistry, furnishing 
useful information regarding many commercial proc- 
esses in chemical engineering. For much of this 
development the ultramicroscope is responsible. 

To the chemical engineer catalytic processes are 
becoming increasingly important. Much argument 
still hovers around the question as to whether 
catalysis is a physical or a chemical process. Here 
again it is evident that theory lags behind practice. 
The physicist must be called to the aid of the chemist 
before a solution can be expected. These examples 
of the contributions of pure science to engineering 
might be multiplied indefinitely. Enough, however, 
has been said to show that the fundamental theories 
of all branches of physics are valuable additions to 
the stock in trade of the engineer. 

In concluding this plea for the study of physics 
as a pure science, it is only necessary to summarize 
what has been said. 

The study of dynamics, of heat, sound, light, and 
electricity, which form the separate branches of the 
science of physics, is the foundation of all engi- 
neering. From the point of view of immediate utility 
a thorough understanding of the fundamental prin- 
ciples is desirable. 

In dealing with the relations of force and energy 
to matter the science of physics is the most exact 
of all the experimental sciences. A course of 
study in it leads to habits of clear and concise 



THE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICS 133 



thinking. Experimentally, it develops skill in ma- 
nipulation and independence of action. 

Again, progress in engineering comes through 
coordinated research. In this, depth of knowledge 
alone is not sufficient; breadth is also essential. 
For this reason the prospective engineer should 
study all branches of physics, and not alone that 
in which his particular interest lies. 

All these points relate to the immediate utility 
of physics to the engineer. No mention has been 
made of the study of physics in its relation to the 
engineer as a man. In this connection, however, 
attention might be drawn to the pleasure which 
is to be derived from the study for its own sake, 
a pleasure which must be experienced in order to 
be appreciated. In examining the coordination 
found in the orderly working of natural law, a 
student will be amply repaid by the satisfaction 
which comes with the knowledge of truth. 



X 

MODERN PHYSICS 

ROBERT ANDREWS MILLIKAN 

By no scientist has the ideal of truth for its own sake been 
accepted more absolutely than by the physicist, who, as Pro- 
fessor Hunter has indicated, has contributed more than any 
other to the progress of engineering; and by no writer has that 
ideal been formulated more attractively than by Professor 
MiUikan. Robert Andrews Millikan (1868- ), educated at 
Oberlin College, at Columbia University, at the University of 
Berlin, and at the University of Gottingen, is one of the leading 
physicists of America. At present he is Professor of Physics 
in the University of Chicago, vice-Chairman of the National 
Research Council, and Chief of the Science and Research 
Division of the Signal Corps. The extract below, forming 
an introduction to a survey of recent developments in physics, 
is reprinted, by permission of the author and editor, from the 
Proceedings of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 
for September, 191 7.] 

The spirit of modern science is something rela- 
tively new in the history of the world, and I want 
to give an analysis of what it is. I want to take 
you up in an aeroplane which flies in time rather 
than in space, and look down with you upon the 
high peaks that distinguish the centuries, and let 
you see what is the distinguishing characteristic 

134 



MODERN PHYSICS 135 



of the century in which we Hve. I think there will 
be no question at all, if you get far enough out of 
it so that you can see the w^oods without having 
your vision clouded by the proximity of the trees, 
that the thing which is characteristic of our modern 
civilization is the spirit of scientific research — a 
spirit which first grew up in the subject of physics, 
and which has spread from that to all other sub- 
jects of modern scientific inquiry. 

That spirit has three elements. The first is a 
philosophy; the second is a method, and the third 
is a faith. 

Look first at the philosophy. It is new for the 
reason that all primitive peoples, and many that 
are not primitive, have held a philosophy that is 
both animistic and fatalistic. Every phenomenon 
which is at all unusual, or for any reason not imme- 
diately intelligible, used to be attributed to the 
direct action of some invisible personal being. 
Witness the peopling of the woods and streams with 
spirits, by the Greeks; the miracles and possession 
by demons, of the Jews; the witchcraft manias of 
our own Puritan forefathers, only two or three 
hundred years ago. 

That a supine fatalism results from such a phi- 
losophy is to be expected; for according to it every- 
thing that happens is the will of the gods, or the 
will of some more powerful beings than ourselves. 
And so, in all the ancient world, and in much of 



136 ROBERT ANDREWS MILLIKAN 



the modern also, three bhnd fates sit down in 
dark and deep inferno and weave out the fates of 
men. Man himself is not a vital agent in the 
march of things; he is only a speck, an atom which 
is hurled hither and thither in the play of mysterious, 
titanic, uncontrollable forces. 

Now, the philosophy of physics, a philosophy 
which was held at first timidly, always tentatively, 
always as a mere working hypothesis, but yet held 
with ever increasing conviction from the time of 
Galileo, when the experimental method may be 
said to have had its beginnings, is the exact antith- 
esis of this. Stated in its most sweeping form, 
it holds that the universe is rationally inteUigible, 
no matter how far from a complete comprehension 
of it we may now be, or indeed may ever come 
to be. It believes in the absolute uniformity of 
Nature. It views the world as a mechanism, every 
part and every movement of which fits in some 
definite, invariable way into the other parts and 
the other movements; and it sets itself the inspir- 
ing task of studying every phenomenon in the 
confident hope that the connections between it 
and other phenomena can ultimately be found. 
It will have naught of caprice. Such is the spirit, 
the attitude, the working hypothesis of all modern 
science; and this philosophy is in no sense mate- 
rialistic, because good, and mind, and soul, and 
moral values, — these things are all here just as 
truly as are any physical objects; they must simply 



MODERN PHYSICS 137 



be inside and not outside of this matchless mech- 
anism. 

Second, as to the method of science. It is a 
method practically unknown to the ancient world; 
for that world was essentially subjective in all its 
thinking, and built up its views of things largely 
by introspection. The scientific method, on the 
other hand, is a method which is completely objec- 
tive. It is the method of the working hypothesis 
which is ready for the discard the very minute that 
it fails to work. It is the method which believes 
in a minute, careful, wholly dispassionate analysis 
of a situation; and any physicist or engineer who 
allows the least trace of prejudice or preconception 
to enter into his study of a given problem violates 
the most sacred duty of his profession. This 
present cataclysm, which has set the world back a 
thousand years in so many ways, has shown us the 
pitiful spectacle of scientists who have forgotten 
completely the scientific method, and who have 
been controlled simply by prejudice and precon- 
ception. This fact is no reflection on the scientific 
method; it merely means that these men have not 
been able to carry over the methods they use in 
their science into all the departments of their 
thinking. The world has been controlled by preju- 
dice and emotionalism so long that reversions still 
occur; but the fact that these reversions occur 
does not discredit the scientist, nor make him 



138 ROBERT ANDREWS MILLIKAN 

disbelieve in his method. Why? Simply because 
that method has worked, it is working to-day, and 
its promise of working to-morrow is larger than it 
has ever been before in the history of the world. 

Do you realize that within the life of men now 
living, within a hundred years, or one hundred and 
thirty years at most, all the external conditions 
under which man lives his life in this earth have 
been more completely revolutionized than during 
all the ages of recorded history v^hich preceded.? 
My great-grandfather lived essentially the same 
kind of life, so far as external conditions were con- 
cerned, as did his Assyrian prototype six thousand 
years ago. He went as far as his own legs, or the 
legs of his horse, could carry him. He dug his 
ditch, he mowed his hay, with the power of his own 
two arms, or the power of his wife's two arms, 
with an occasional lift from his horse or his ox. 
He carried a dried potato in his pocket to keep 
ofF rheumatism, and he worshipped his God in 
almost the same superstitious way. It was not until 
the beginning of the nineteenth century that the 
great discovery of the ages began to be borne in 
upon the consciousness of mankind through the 
work of a few patient, indefatigable men who had 
caught the spirit which Galileo perhaps first notably 
embodied, and passed on to Newton, to Franklin, 
to Faraday, to Maxwell, and to the other great 
architects of the modern scientific world in which 
we live, — the discovery that man is not a pawn in 



MODERN PHYSICS 139 



a game played by higher powers, that his external 
as well as his internal destiny is in his own hands. 

You may prefer to have me call that not a dis- 
covery but a faith. Very well! It is the faith 
of the scientist, and it is a faith which he will tell 
you has been justified by works. Take just this 
one illustration, suggested by the opening remarks 
of your President. In the mystical fatalistic ages 
electricity was simply the agent of an inscrutable 
Providence; it was Elijah's fire from Heaven sent 
down to consume the enemies of Jehovah, or it 
was Jove's thunderbolt hurled by an angry god; 
and it was just as impious to study so direct a 
manifestation of God's power in the world as it 
would be for a child to study the strap with which 
he is being punished, or the mental attributes of 
the father who wields the strap. It was only one 
hundred and fifty years ago that Franklin sent 
up his famous kite, and showed that thunder bolts 
are identical with the sparks which he could draw 
on a winter's night from his cat's back. Then, 
thirty years afterwards, Volta found that he could 
manufacture them artificially by dipping dissimilar 
metals into an acid. And, thirty years further 
along. Oersted found that, when tamed and running 
noiselessly along a wire, they will deflect a magnet; 
and with that discovery the electric battery was 
born, and the erstwhile blustering thunderbolts 
were set the inglorious task of ringing house bells, 



140 ROBERT .\XDREWS MILLIKAN 

primarily for the convenience of womankind. Ten 
years later Farada}' found that all he had to do to 
obtain a current was to move a wire across the pole 
of a magnet, and in that discovery the dynamo 
was born, and our modern electrical age, with its 
electric transmission of power, its electric lighting, 
its electric telephoning, electric toasting, electric 
foot warming, and electric milking. All that is 
an immediate and inevitable consequence of that 
discovery — a discovery which grew out of the faith 
of a few physicists that the most mysterious, the 
most capricious, and the most terrible of natural 
phenomena is capable of a rational explanation and 
ultimately amenable to human control. 

At the end of the nineteenth century there were 
many physicists and engineers who thought that 
all the great discoveries had been made. It was 
a common statement that this was so. I heard 
it made publicly in 1894, and yet within a year 
of that time I happened to be present in Berlin 
at the meeting of the Physical Society at which 
Rontgen showed his first photographs, and since 
that time we have had a whole new world, the 
very existence of which was undreamed of before, 
opened up to our astonished eyes. We have found a 
world of electrons which underlies the world of 
atoms and molecules with which we had been 
famihar, and the discoveries in that world have 
poured in so rapidly within the last twenty years 



MODERN PHYSICS 141 



that there are no two decades in human history 
that compare at all with them in rapidity of ad- 
vance. And these discoveries have been made for 
the most part by groups of men interested merely 
in finding out how Nature works. They have 
been made almost exclusively by college professors; 
and for ten years they remained the exclusive 
property of these professors. What has happened 
in the last ten years? The industrial world has 
fallen over itself in its endeavor to get hold of 
these advances; and by their aid it has increased 
ten-fold the power of the telephone; it has obtained 
four or five times as much light as we got a few 
years ago out of a given amount of electrical power; 
it has developed new kinds of transformers the 
existence of which was never dreamed of before. 
All these things are coming nozv; and how many 
more are going to come, no man can tell. 

And yet we must not focus our attention too 
intently upon the utility of a discovery. Did you 
ever hear the story of what happened when Faraday 
was making before the Royal Society, in 183 1, 
the experiment to which your Chairman referred? 
He performed his experiment, and then explained 
it. It was simple, it did not look particularly in- 
teresting. And some woman in the audience said, 
"But, Professor Faraday, of what use is it?" His 
reply was, "Madam, will you tell me of what use 
is a newborn babe?" — and what a reply it was! 
Infinite possibilities — possibilities which may indeed 



142 ROBERT ANDREWS MILLIKAN 

not be realized, but at any rate something alto^ 
gether new, Faraday did not care about the imme- 
diate use; for he was one of the great souls who 
had caught the spirit of Galileo. He knew that 
human progress depends primarily upon the growth 
oj the human mind, the ability of man to get hold 
of Nature. The utilities might come. They always 
do come, but they generally crop out as by-products; 
and the man who has got his mind fixed merely on 
utilities is simply the man who kills the hen to 
get the golden egg. I have just as much respect 
for utiHties as anybody has. I beHeve that nothing 
is worth while except as it contributes in the end 
to human progress; but the difficulty is that you 
cannot tell, nor can I, nor anybody else tell, what 
is going to contribute to human progress. The 
thing that is important is that the human mind 
should grow. That is the sine qua non of progress. 

At the Capitol in Harrisburgh is a picture by 
Sir Edwin Abbey, which is entitled, "Wisdom, or 
the Spirit of Science." It consists of a veiled figure 
with the forked lightnings in one hand, and in the 
other, the owl and the serpent, the symbols of 
mystery; and beneath is the inscription: 

"I am what is, what hath been, and what shall be. 
My veil has been disclosed by none. 
What I have brought forth is this: The sun is born." 

It is to lighten man's understanding, to illuminate 
his path through life, and not merely to make it 
easy, that science exists. Hence, if you ask me 



MODERN PHYSICS 143 



what are the utilities of the particular category of 
discoveries which I am going to run over here very 
rapidly, I may be able to tell you of a good many 
of them; but I shall not try to catalogue them all, 
because that is not where our immediate interest 
lies. "Where there is no vision the people perish." 



CHEMISTRY 



XI 

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN APPLIED 
CHEMISTRY AND ENGINEERING 

JOHN BAKER CANNINGTON KERSHAW 

[Like mathematics and physics, chemistry also may be 
regarded from a utilitarian point of view. In the following 
article the writer has indicated a number of its uses to the 
engineer. Though it was written nearly ten years ago, and 
though the list is now obsolete, it is indicative of recent de- 
velopments. A completion of the summary would be an inter- 
esting and valuable exercise. The author, John Baker Canning- 
ton Kershaw, was educated at Owens College, Manchester, and 
at the University of Bonn. After a successful career at the 
Sutton Lodge Chemical Works, St. Helen's, England, he estab- 
lished himself in Liverpool and London as a consulting chemist 
and technical journalist. The following essay is reprinted, by 
^TTcingQmenti from Industrial Enginegringj October 15, 1909.] 

The writer recently had some correspondence 
with one of the most notable and successful engineers 
of the present day upon the relations of chemistry 
and engineering, and in the course of this corre- 
spondence the latter expressed the opinion that the 
chief work of the industrial era which is now dawning 
will be carried out not by chemists, and not by 
engineers, but by men who combine a working 
knowledge of both chemistry and engineering. 

This opinion is somewhat in advance of that 

147 



148 JOHN BAKER CANNINGTON KERSHAW 



generally held by engineers, and it is the writer's 
purpose in this article to examine the evidence 
which can be deduced in support of it from a 
study of the industries of the United Kingdom and 
the United States at the present time. 

The industrial progress of the nineteenth century 
was without doubt chiefly due to the work of engi- 
neers. The discovery and development of the coal 
resources of England and America followed imme- 
diately the improvement of Watt's and Stevenson's 
steam engines. Mechanical power gradually re- 
placed hand power in all departments of manu- 
facturing industry; the factory system became 
established, and was followed by an enormous 
increase in the scale of production and by a corre- 
sponding diminution in the costs of manufacture. 
During this period of rapid progress it was the 
engineer who took the leading role and directed 
operations. 

The building of the main lines of railway which 
traverse the United Kingdom and the great continent 
of North America was also carried out by engineers 
during the middle and later years of the nineteenth 
century, while it is to electrical engineers that 
we owe thanks for the improvements in the speed 
and comforts of suburban travel which have taken 
place during the last twenty-five years. The ma- 
terial and industrial progress of the nineteenth 
century from its dawn to its close was in fact dom- 
inated by the engineer, the chemist, except in 



APPLIED CHEMISTRY AND ENGINEERING 149 

Germany, being relegated to an inferior and much 
more humble position. 

What grounds are there, then, for asserting that 
the twentieth century is to witness some correction 
of this relationship, or for the belief that the material 
and industrial progress of the present century will 
be more largely due to the application of chemical 
principles and knowledge to the problems of the 
world of industry? 

Is this a mere assumption, or can it be supported 
by facts drawn from the present conditions of 
industry in both the old and the new worlds ? 

For the purposes of this article and of the general 
argument which runs through it, it will be most 
useful to consider the facts under the headings into 
which the subject naturally divides itself. 

In the early days of the mid-Victorian Epoch, 
when the factory system had just established itself, 
and the world market lay open to each manu- 
facturer, there was little need to care for the economic 
aspect of power generation. The saving by the 
substitution of mechanical for hand power was so 
great that a large market and huge profits were 
assured, and no manufacturer or factory owner 
bothered himself with the question whether his 
fuel was being utilized to the best advantage, or 
with the efficiency of his boiler installation. The 
power costs might be high, when considered in the 
light of present-day knowledge, but the price at 



150 JOHN BAKER CANNINGTON KERSHAW 

which he sold his goods sufficed to cover these and 
to yield him large profits. 

To-day the position is changed. Not only has 
each manufacturer to meet competition from rival 
manufacturers both in his own and other countries 
that grows more keen as the years pass, but new 
and cheaper sources of power are being tapped and 
exploited. These render it imperative that the power 
item in each manufacturer's cost sheet should be 
reduced to the lowest possible figure if he is to main- 
tain his position in the struggle. 

It is here that the chemist has stepped in, and 
has rendered great service to the engineer. By 
pointing out actual sources of loss in the steam 
power plant, and also by suggesting methods of 
checking them, he has done something to raise 
the efficiency and to prolong the life of the steam 
power plant and of the manufacturer who depends 
upon it. No large steam power plant of the present 
day, in fact, can be considered well equipped unless 
it possesses a laboratory for the regular examination 
of fuel, feed water, and waste gases; and the more 
attention there is paid to this work, the greater are 
the efficiency and economy of the power plant. 
Savings in fuel ranging from five per cent up to 
fifteen per cent and twenty per cent have been 
recorded. The aim is, first, to obtain the highest 
possible amount of heat by the combustion of the 
fuel, and, second^ to transfer this heat to the water 
with the minimum percentage of loss. 



APPLIED CHEMISTRY AND ENGINEERING 151 

Turning to the other sources of power which 
have been exploited only within recent years — 
although w^th much energy and success — we must 
admit that the chemist has not scope for the display 
of his abilities in the generation of power from 
water^ and that here chemical knowledge and 
chemical principles are at a discount except in 
regard to the choice of oils and lubricants for trans- 
formers and motors. 

When one turns, however, to the subject of gas 
power, he is confronted by problems which are 
mainly chemical in character. The design and 
operation of gas producers and gas engines demand 
chemical knowledge and an engineering chemist's 
supervision if the plant is to be successful. 

The gas engine is already hailed as the prime 
mover of the near future, and since its thermal 
efficiency is approximately two and a half times 
that of the best steam engine, the ousting of the 
latter is only a question of time. The conversion 
of fuel into a gas of regular quality suitable for use 
in a large gas engine is, however, a more difficult 
operation and process than its complete combustion 
in the furnace of a steam boiler, and chemical 
engineers will be required to take charge of all 
producer gas installations designed for power gen- 
eration on a large scale. 

Even in the utilization of poor fuels like peat the 
chemist and chemical engineer will have an im- 
portant role to fill; for the only processes of peat 



152 JOHN BAKER CANNixGTON KERSHAW 

Utilization which seem to hold the seeds of success 
depend upon the gasification of the peat and the 
recovery of the tar and other by-products, including 
the nitrogen as ammonia. The power-gas plant 
of the future will in fact in many cases resemble 
a small chemical works, and the production of the 
gas will be but the first and most unimportant step 
in a whole series of chemical operations and processes. 
Chemists and chemical engineers will thus have a 
great future before them in this branch of power 
generation. 

The smelting of iron and the manufacture of steel 
is one of the oldest and most important of the 
world's industries, and in this industry the engineer 
with the training of a metallurgical chemist or 
metallurgist is rapidly increasing in importance. 
One of the most remarkable and far-reaching 
discoveries of the last twenty-five years relates 
to the influence of small amounts of such metals 
as nickel, manganese, chromium, tungsten, and 
vanadium upon the physical properties of the 
finished steel. The manufacture of armor plate 
and of high-speed tool steels is now a most important 
branch of the steel industry, and this branch of 
manufacture is rendered possible only by the care- 
ful work of the chemist and metallurgist. It is 
in fact now believed that the high qualities of the 
best Swedish steel and the remarkable properties 
of the sword blades made in Damascus and Toledo 



APPLIED CHEMISTRY AND ENGINEERING 153 

hundreds of years ago are due to the accidental 
presence of some of these rare metals in the original 
ore from which the steel was made. The metal- 
lurgist is thus repeating to-day, by more scientific 
methods, the chance mixings which produced the 
wonderful sword steels of an age long gone by. 

The electric furnace has placed in the hands of 
the steel manufacturer a whole series of alloys 
of the rare metals with iron which were unobtainable 
ten or fifteen years ago, and in the manufacture 
and utilization of these alloys the metallurgical 
chemist must necessarily fill an important role. 

The chemical side of iron and steel manufacture 
is thus becoming of greater importance in the 
successful conduct of this large and most important 
industry, and no steel maker of the present day 
can afford to remain ignorant of the chemical and 
metallurgical principles underlying its manufacture. 

The manufacture of Portland cement is another 
of the world's large industries that is rapidly growing, 
and in which the importance of the chemist and 
chemical engineer cannot be over-emphasized. The 
modern method of building construction in which 
reinforced concrete has displaced brick and stone 
has led to an enormously increased demand for 
Portland cement, and the safety of many of our 
largest modern buildings is thus dependent upon 
the quality of the concrete used in their construc- 
tion. But the quality of Portland cement requires 
care and attention in the selection, grinding, and 



154 JOHN BAKER CANNINGTON KERSHAW 



mixing of the raw materials from which it is made; 
and here again the chemical engineer is the man who 
controls the processes and determines the success 
or failure of the manufacture. 

Gold extraction is another example of an old 
established and important industry which has now 
entered upon a phase in which the chemist is as 
important as, if not more important than, the 
engineer. Since the introduction of the cyanide 
process of gold extraction, by means of which 
enormous reserves and waste heaps of gold bearing 
sand or "tailings" have been treated, and the 
gold extracted with a minimum of cost, new gold 
bearing districts have been developed, and the 
gold output of the world has been trebled. The 
cyanide process is, however, essentially chemical 
or electro-chemical in character, and no cyanide 
plant can be worked without a staff of skilled 
metallurgical chemists to control it. 

The simple mechanical process of gold recovery 
by washing has in fact been displaced by a chemical 
process of extraction, and a cyanide plant is really 
a chemical works in which gold is extracted from 
the taihngs by aid of a suitable solvent, and is then 
deposited from the solution by chemical substitu- 
tion of another metal; namely, lead or zinc. 

The extraction or separation of other metals 
from their ores by similar methods is also extending,^ 

* Among recent advances in the art of separating and refining metals 
are the electro-chemical processes for the deposition of silver, lead, zinc. 



APPLIED CHEMISTRY AND ENGINEERING 155 



and a knowledge of chemistry is thus becoming 
more and more imperative for those who have 
control of smelting operations. In many cases ores 
contain small amounts of rarer metals of high 
value, which can be recovered with large profits 
if the attempt is made by men possessing the 
requisite engineering and chemical knowledge. The 
separation of the rare earths from the monazite 
sands of Brazil is another large and important 
industry in which chemical methods play the 
leading part. The dump heap of some old estab- 
lished mine is now often found to be of greater 
value than the mine itself. 

The twentieth century will no doubt be marked 
in the history of the world's manufacturing indus- 
tries by the success of the efforts made to utilize 
"waste products/' and in this field of activity the 
chemist or chemical engineer will again take the 
leading role. Power from the waste gases of blast 
furnaces is already generated upon a large scale, 
both on the continent and in this country. There 
is little reason to doubt that, as time passes, 
this hitherto wasted source of energy will be more 
utilized for various purposes. But the design and 
control of large gas engines of one thousand horse 
power and upwards, operating with blast furnace 
gas, demand chemical knowledge, and, any large 

tin, antimony, etc. In many cases the cost of refining is met by the 
value of the metals recovered. — Editor. 



156 JOHN BAKER CANNINGTON KERSHAW 

installation of this kind can be erected and run 
with success only by men possessing both chemical 
and engineering training. Gas analysis will in 
fact form a regular feature in the operation of any 
large plant for generating power from blast furnace 
gases, and the men in charge must be able to 
interpret results if the highest economy is to be 
attained. 

Waste products containing combustible matter 
are now burned in special forms of furnace, or are 
utilized in gas producers in order to recover the 
heat value of the combustible; and here again 
chemical and engineering knowledge is required in 
order to design and work the furnaces or producers 
with the maximum of efficiency. Refuse destructors 
also demand similar qualifications in those who design 
and control them. 

The manufacture of useful products from the 
slag of blast furnaces and from the clinker of fur- 
naces and destructors is another branch of modern 
industry that is grov/ing rapidly in importance, 
and in which large profits can be made. 

It was the chemist who first pointed out the value 
to the agriculturist of the phosphorus contained in 
the ground Thomas slag; and the manufacture of 
ground slag is now an important sub-branch of the 
iron and steel industry. 

The manufacture of artificial stone and of building 
slabs from the clinker of destructors and other 
similar types of furnace is also a growing industry, 



APPLIED CHEMISTRY AND ENGINEERING 157 

and one in which a knowledge of both chemistry 
and engineering is demanded. 

The treatment of sewage is another example of 
a large and important public service which is now 
largely controlled by the chemist or chemical 
engineer. The collection and pumping of sewage 
is no longer the end of the story, but is merely 
the preliminary to some form of treatment. It is 
no longer thought wise or beneficial, in fact, to turn 
sewage in its raw state into the nearest river or 
river estuary; the bacterial treatment of sewage 
has been generally accepted as the best and most 
efficient system of purification. 

The authorities of most of the larger English 
towns and cities which care for sanitation have 
erected bacterial tanks and filter beds, and are 
increasing their equipment of these. But the bac- 
terial treatment of sewage is really a chemical 
operation in which living organisms are carrying 
out the chemical changes required to produce a 
harmless effluent, and if the highest success is to 
be achieved, chemical engineers are again required 
to design and take charge of these installations. 

Limits of space will not allow the writer to dis- 
cuss in a detailed manner those manufacturing 
industries in which a more extensive knowledge of 
chemistry is of supreme importance for those who 
are in a position of authority. The aniline dye 
industry is perhaps the most notable example of a 



158 JOHN BAKER CANNINGTON KERSHAW 

large industry created by the labors of the chemist 
in his laboratory. Other manufactures similar in 
character are artificial indigo, madder, silk, rubber, 
leather, wood, and ivory, and last, but not least, 
artificial nitrates from the air.^ The manufacture 
of explosives is also becoming more and more 
chemical in character. 

In all these manufactures engineering and chem- 
ical knowledge must be combined in order to obtain 
the best results, and it would be difficult for either 
an engineer or chemist alone to overcome all the 
difficulties met. 

Sufficient, however, has been said to show the 
importance of chemical knowledge for the practical 
engineers who are to control the manufacturing 
industries of the twentieth century, and to sub- 
stantiate the claim that chemical engineering will 
be one of the most important professions of the 
coming industrial era. The proceedings of the 
Seventh International Congress of Applied Chemistry 
which met in London in May of the present year 
provide a fitting commentary upon this article; 
for the Congress was divided into seventeen sections 
and sub-sections, and the subjects dealt with in 
the papers read and discussed embraced nearly 
every branch of manufacturing industry. 

1 During the Great War the production of artificial nitrates assumed 
unprecedented importance. The arc process for the manufacture of 
nitric acid, the cyanide process, and the process for the s>Tithesis of 
ammonia were highly developed. 

Similar development took place in all other chemical industries. — 
Editor. 



XII 

THE NATURE AND METHOD OF 
CHEMISTRY 

ALFRED SENIER 

[Though chemistry, like mathematics and physics, is a means 
to an end, it may be regarded as an end in itself, and adventured 
through dehght in the imaginative processes by which it is car- 
ried forward. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the highest results 
can be obtained unless it be approached from the seemingly 
antagonistic points of view already indicated. Of its method 
the following extract, constituting the first part of an address 
delivered before the Chemical Section of the British Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, is notably suggestive. It 
is reprinted, by permission of the editor, from Nature^ September 
12, 1912. The author, Alfred Senier (1853-1918), educated at 
the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, and 
the University of Berlin, was Professor of Chemistry in Univer- 
sity College, Galway, Ireland.] 

Perhaps there is no intellectual occupation which 
demands more of the faculty of imagination than 
the pursuit of chemistry, and perhaps also there 
is none which responds more generously to the 
yearnings of the inquirer. It is surely no com- 
monplace occurrence that in experimental labo- 
ratories day by day the mysterious recesses of 
Nature are disclosed, and facts previously unknown 

159 



160 ALFRED SENIER 



are brought to light. The late Sir Michael Foster, 
in his presidential address at the Dover meeting, 
said: '^Nature is ever making signs to us, she is 
ever whispering the beginnings of her secrets." 
The facts disclosed may have general importance, 
and necessitate at once changes in theory; and 
happily, also, they may at once find useful applica- 
tion in the hands of the technologist. Recent 
examples are the discoveries in radioactivity, which 
have found a place as an aid to medical and surgical 
diagnosis and as a method of treatment, and have 
also led to the necessity of our revising one of the 
fundamental doctrines of chemistry — the indivisi- 
bility of atoms. But the facts disclosed may not 
be general or even seem important; they may 
appear isolated and to have no appreciable bearing 
on theory and practice — our journals are crowded 
with such — but he would be a bold man who would 
venture to predict that the future will not find 
use for them in both respects. To be the recip- 
ient of the confidences of Nature; to realize in all 
their virgin freshness new facts recognized as pos- 
itive additions to knowledge is certainly a great 
and wonderful privilege, one capable of inspiring 
enthusiasm as few other things can. 

While the method of discovery in chemistry may 
be described, generally, as inductive, all the modes 
of inference which have come down to us from 
Aristotle — analogical, inductive, and deductive — are 
freely used. A hypothesis is framed - and tested, 



NATURE AND METHOD OF CHEMISTRY 161 

directly or indirectly, by observation and experi- 
ment. All the skill, all the resources the inquirer 
can command, are brought into service; and the 
hypothesis is established, and becomes part of the 
theory of science, or is rejected or modified. In 
framing or modifying hypotheses, imagination is 
indispensable. It may be that the power of imagi- 
nation is necessarily limited by what is previously 
in experience — that imagination cannot transcend 
experience; but it does not follow, therefore, that 
it cannot construct hypotheses capable of leading 
research. I take it that what imagination actually 
does is to rearrange experience and put it into new 
relations; and with each successive discovery it 
gains in material for this process. In this respect 
the framing of a hypothesis is like an experiment 
in which the operator brings matter and energy 
already existing in Nature into new relations with 
the object of getting new results. The stronger the 
imaginative power, the greater the chance of suc- 
cess. The Times, in a recent article on science and 
imagination, says: "It has often been said that 
the great scientific discoverers . . . see a new 
truth before they prove it, and the process of proof 
is only a demonstration of the truth to others and 
a confirmation of it to their own reason." While 
never forgetting the tentative nature of a hypoth- 
esis, still, until it has been tested and found wanting, 
one should have confidence or faith in its truth- 
fulness; for nothing but behef in its eventual success 



162 ALFRED SENIER 



can serve to sustain an inquirer's ardor when, as 
so often happens, he is met by difficulties well- 
nigh insuperable. In a well-known passage Faraday- 
says: "The world little knows how many of the 
thoughts and theories which have passed through 
the mind of a scientific investigator have been 
crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe 
criticism and adverse examination; that in the 
most successful instances not a tenth of the sug- 
gestions, the hopes, the wishes, the preliminary 
conclusions have been realized." 

But a hypothesis to be useful, to be admitted 
as a candidate for rank as a scientific theory, must 
be capable of immediate, or at least of possible, 
verification. Many years ago, in the old Berlin 
laboratory in the Georgenstrasse, when our imagina- 
tions were wont, as sometimes happened, to soar 
too far above the working benches, our great leader 
used to say: "I will listen readily to any suggested 
hypothesis, but on one condition — that you show 
me a method by which it can be tested." As a 
rule, I confess that we had to return to the work- 
a-day world, to our bench experiments. No one 
felt the importance of careful and correct employ- 
ment of hypotheses more than Liebig. In his 
Faraday lecture Hofmann says of him: "If he 
finds his speculation to be contrary to recognized 
facts, he endeavors to set these facts aside by new 
experiments, and, failing to do so, he drops the 
speculation." Again, he gives an illustration of 



NATURE AND METHOD OF CHEMISTRY 163 

how, on one occasion, not being able to divest him- 
self of a hypothesis, Liebig missed the discovery 
of the element bromine. While at Kreuznach he 
made an investigation of the mother liquor of the 
well-known salt, and obtained a considerable quan- 
tity of a heavy red liquid which he believed to be 
a chloride of iodine. He found the properties to 
be different in many respects from chloride of 
iodine, but he was unable to satisfy all his doubts, 
and he put the liquid aside. Some months later 
he received Balard's paper announcing the dis- 
covery of bromine, which he recognized at once 
as the red liquid which he had previously prepared 
and studied. Thus, though imagination is indis- 
pensable to a chemist, and though I think chemists 
should be, and let us hope are, poets, little can 
be achieved without a thorough laboratory training; 
and he who discovers an improved experimental 
method or a new differentiating reaction is as 
surely contributing to the advancement of science 
as he who creates in his imagination the most beau- 
tiful and promising hypothesis. 

It may never be possible to trace the origin of 
chemistry, but the historical student has been led, 
it appears to me, by a sure instinct to search for 
it in such lands of imaginative story as ancient 
Egypt and Arabia. Is there anything more fit- 
tingly comparable to the marvelous experiences of a 
chemical laboratory than the wonderful and fas- 
cinating stories that have come down to us in 



164 ALFRED SENIER 



The Arabian Nights, those monuments of poetic 
building of which Burton, in the introduction to 
his great translation, says that in times of official 
exile in less favored lands, in the wilds of Africa 
and America, he was lifted in imagination by the 
jinn out of his dull surroundings, and was borne 
ofF by them to his beloved Arabia, where, under 
diaphanous skies, he would see again "the evening 
star hanging like a golden lamp from the pure front 
of the western firmament; the afterglow trans- 
figuring and transforming as by magic the gazelle- 
brown and tawny-clay tints and the homely and 
rugged features of the scene into a fairyland lit 
with a light which never shines on other soils or 
seas?" I cannot help thinking that the study of 
such books as this, the habit of exercising the 
imagination by reconstructing the scenes of beauty 
and enchantment which they describe, might do 
much to strengthen and sharpen the imaginative 
faculty, and might greatly increase its efficiency 
as an indispensable tool in the hands of the pioneer 
who seeks to extend the boundaries of knowledge. 
The Times, in the article already quoted, says that, 
as with a Shakespeare, "it is the same with imagi- 
native discoverers in science. . . . But the faculty 
is not merely a fairy gift that can be exercised with- 
out pains. As the sense of right is trained by right 
action, so the sense of truth is trained by right 
thinking and by all the labor which it involves. 
That is as true of the artist as of the man of science; 



NATURE AND METHOD OF CHEMISTRY 165 

and one of the greatest achievements of science 
has been to prove this fact and so to justify the 
imagination and distinguish it from fancy." 

Again, let it not be forgotten that chemistry 
in its highest sense — that is, in its most general 
and useful sense — is purely a world of the imagina- 
tion, is purely conceptual. And in addition to this, 
moreover, it is based, like all science, on the under- 
lying assumption of the uniformity of Nature, an 
assumption incapable of proof. If we think of 
the science as a body of abstract general theory, 
and exclude for the moment from our view its 
innumerable practical applications, and also all 
special individual facts not yet known to be related 
to general theory, then what remains are the more 
or less general facts or laws. These it is which 
give the power of prediction in new cases of similar 
character; the power of foresight by which the 
claim of chemistry to its position as a science is 
justified. Chemistry, as such, is an ideal structure 
of the imagination, a gigantic fairy palace, and, 
be it noted, can continue to exist only so long as 
there are minds capable of reproducing it. Think 
of all the speculation — and speculation too of the 
highest utility when translated into concrete appli- 
cations — about the internal structure of molecules. 
I venture to say that the most magnificent crea- 
tions of the greatest architects are not more elaborate 
nor more beautiful nor more fairylike than the 
chemist's conception of intramolecular structure and 



166 ALFRED SENIER 



the magical transformations of which molecules are 
capable; and yet no one has had direct sensuous 
experience of any molecule or atom, nor possibly 
ever will have. But although the conceptual nature 
of the science is unquestionable, it certainly contains 
truth in some form as tested by concrete realiza- 
tion and correctness of prediction; and during the 
last century or two it has undoubtedly given to man 
a mastery over Nature of which he had never 
dreamed. 



IMAGINATION 



XIII 

THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN 
ENGINEERING 

ISHAM RANDOLPH 

[Though an engineer be a master of the tools which are the 
bases of his profession, he cannot expect to be a successful prac- 
titioner unless he is gifted with the power of imagination. 
How the imaginative faculty, already referred to, operates under 
stress of practice is suggested by Dr. Isham Randolph (1848- 
) in the following address, which is reprinted, by permis- 
sion of the author and editor, from the Journal oj the Franklin 
Institute for August, 1913. A consulting engineer, Dr. Ran- 
dolph has had a long and distinguished career as head of various 
western railroads. He has been associated also with the con- 
struction of the great canals and harbors of the continent, 
having been Chairman of the Florida Everglades Engineering 
Committee, a member of the International Board of Consulting 
Engineers for the Panama Canal, and a member of the Advisory 
Board. During 1907-1912 he completed the Chicago Sanitary 
and Ship Canal, the largest artificial channel before the cut at 
the Isthmus. His most interesting achievement is the Obelisk 
Dam above the Horse Shoe Falls at Niagara, which he built 
on end and toppled into the river.] 

"We had visions, oh! they were as grand 
As ever floated out of fancy land." 

are words sung by a poet of our own land to the 
ears of a few who knew, honored, and loved the 
singer. He sang of the Lost Cause with a beauty 

169 



170 ISHAM RANDOLPH 



and a pathos that touched the hearts of all who 
mourned for the men who followed that conquered 
banner along the path that led to glory and the 
grave. 

The sculptor beholds in blocks of marble, forms 
that are hid from his fellow men, who see only a 
mass of stubborn stone. The explorers of Olympia 
have resurrected from the detritus which buried 
them treasures of Grecian art wrought from marble 
by Phidias, Praxiteles, and others, whose chisels 
made Greece beautiful and themselves famous. 
Within our own time one of our own race and 
nation saw in a marble block an imprisoned form, 
and day by day, with mallet and chisel, he toiled 
to liberate the loveliness of face, torso, and limb 
that duller eyes could not see, but which the opaque 
covering could not hide from him. Little by little 
the revelation which, from the first, was so clear 
to the sculptor came to his dull-eyed fellows, and 
at last the Greek Slave came forth in all her 
womanly beauty to delight the human vision until 
she, too, shall some day be buried, like the creations 
of Praxiteles, in some overwhelming convulsion of 
Nature. 

It is not, however, of the poet's inspired imagin- 
ings nor of the revelations of the sculptor's art 
that I am to speak, but of "The Imaginative Faculty 
in Engineering"; for the engineer, no less than 
the sculptor, sees things that are hid from other 
eyes than his. 



IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN ENGINEERING 171 



What has not God revealed to the sons of men 
when He has drawn aside the veil and let the thing 
that is to be, cast its reflection upon the mirror of 
imagination? Away back in the ages when the 
children of Israel were wandering in the Wilderness, 
It was disclosed to Moses that a tabernacle should 
be created as a centre for the worshippers of the 
Most High God, and to him were revealed the form, 
the fashion, and the adornment of this temple 
made with hands; and the final command, after 
all had been shown to his mental vision, was: "And 
look that thou make them after the pattern that 
was shown thee in the mount." 

A man's first conception of anything which ought 
to be created is his vision, the revelation which 
impresses itself upon his imagination with a reality 
that enables him to reveal it to others, either by 
word painting or by graphic delineation, which, 
after taking form, must be given substance. Giv- 
ing substance to the form involves knowledge — 
knowledge of materials, knowledge of the strength 
of materials — and ability to determine dimensions 
which must be used to give sustaining power to 
the substance which has taken the form revealed 
to the imagination. 

The vision does not always come complete in 
its revelation. First it may be dim, seen through 
a glass darkly; partially obscuring mists hide all 
but a suggestive glimpse of the thing that is to 
be, but that suggestion is grasped by the imaginative 



172 ISHAM RANDOLPH 



faculty, and the eye of the mind gazes earnestly, 
waiting for the passing of the mist and the perfect 
unveiling of the vision. How many of earth's 
monuments which now stand to the honor of the 
engineer and render useful service to mankind had 
their genesis in imagination! Take some mighty 
suspension bridge whose graceful catenary is not 
distorted by loads which would bend a Titan's 
back, and, as you gaze upon it, think how it came 
to pass. Multitudes felt the need, but the way to 
supply it was not given to the multitude. One 
among them all saw the vision. He saw the great 
river flowing by; he felt that the bank on which 
he stood should be joined to the opposite shore. 
But how? Here and over there he would dig 
down into the soil until he reached a stable base; 
in the pits so sunk he would lay firm foundations 
upon which he would rear towers, high and strong. 
Inland from these towers he would plant massive 
anchors of masonry; from the anchor on the hither 
shore to the anchor on the farther shore he would 
pass cables over his high towers, cables that sagged 
between the towers, and from these by rods, gradu- 
ated in length, he would suspend beams, and on 
these beams he would lay his flooring. All of this 
was pictured by his imagination. From that pic- 
ture, as he saw it, he made a material transference 
which could be seen by his fellows. The plan 
was adopted. Deep down to an enduring base 
the foundations were carried by men whose strength 



IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN ENGINEERING 173 

and toil rear all of earth's structures, be they perish- 
able or enduring. Those skilled among them in 
the arts of stereotomy builded the masonry strong 
and high. In the works where ore, dug from the 
mines, is melted and fused by coal dug from other 
mines, the members, of mighty section and prodigi- 
ous strength, were forged and fabricated. In other 
works were drawn the wires that in union would 
make the strength of the cables that should stretch 
across the stream. Trees of centuries' growth, 
felled in far-off forests, were sawn and fashioned 
for their place; and when all was ready, the mul- 
titudinous parts were assembled, the cables were 
made fast to their anchorages and Hfted to their 
saddles on the tops of the towers by machines 
which — like the work that they were set to aid 
in creating — had their beginning in the imagination. 
By and by, all was accomplished; and two tides 
of humanity ebb and flow across the bridge. 

No river sways such power for good to the whole 
land if made amenable to human control, and no 
river in the land is so terribly devastating in its 
unbridled power, as is the Mississippi. Against 
its encroachments men have raised barriers, broad 
and strong, only to have them undermined and 
engulfed by the onsweeping waters. 

This river, for scores of miles before it pours its 
sweet waters into the brine of the Gulf, is wide and 
many fathoms deep; but for uncounted centuries 
it has been transporting soils, filched from its 



174 ISHAM RANDOLPH 



banks, and depositing them at its mouth; building 
land out into the Gulf, and finally crossing barriers 
of its own construction, not by one channel, but 
by many. No one of these channels was deep enough 
to permit ocean-going vessels of the larger class 
to enter the deep, wide water that came down 
from the north and then flowed by shallower ways 
over the barriers and out to sea; and so commerce 
upon the river was only for river craft. About 
the year 1875 a man with a vision came to the 
Government with a plan to secure deep navigation 
across the bars that closed the mouth of the river. 
This man — Eads — saw in his vision tWo lines of 
jetties constructed of willow mattresses weighted 
with stone, laid parallel to each other and a thousand 
feet apart. These, in his mind's eye, grew in height 
and length until they stretched from deep water 
up stream to deep water in the Gulf. He saw the 
waters as they flowed down to this contracted 
channel pile up until they attained a head suf- 
ficient to give them the necessary velocity to carry 
through the reduced cross section the volume which 
had flowed sluggishly through the wider way. He 
saw the velocity impart erosive energy to the 
waters which impinged upon the sand at the bottom 
of this new channel, each eroding drop of water 
picking up its grain of sand and carrying it along 
until, emerging into the unlimited area of the Gulf, 
it lost its energy and dropped its load. Thus myriad 
drops of water carried myriad grains of sand, and 



IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN ENGINEERING 175 



every grain removed tended to deepen the channel 
between the jetties. This he saw, and thus did 
the waters labor until they had dug for themselves 
a way out to the Gulf, through which they might 
flow unvexed; and when that work was accom- 
plished, the way was open for the toilers of the 
sea in their deep-laden craft to pass to and fro 
between the Crescent City and the seaports of the 
world. The imagination wrought first, and the 
physical results confirmed its vision. 

Where the waters of Niagara make their fearful 
leap over the edge of the escarpment, and then 
rush madly down the gorge to the whirlpool and 
beyond, the imaginative faculty in engineering 
has left its impress, and great works bear witness 
to the fact that there it has wrought mightily. 
Back of that awful sheet of falling water is a path- 
way forever wet with the off-flung spray; on one 
side is the hard wall of the escarpment, on the 
other the wall of green, translucent waters, the 
dim twilight effect made awesome by the roar of 
the torrent wall as it drops into the abyss — a wall 
forever falling but never broken. A man trod this 
dangerous path, and he heeded not the roar, nor 
the mist, nor the death that might claim him 
should he make a false step on that slippery footing. 
He saw a vision. His eye pierced the face of the 
escarpment, and he saw a tunnel open up through 
the rock beneath the river. His tunnel went 
straight to a spot in the roaring, seething waters 



176 ISHAM RANDOLPH 

some thousands of feet from where he stood, and 
there he saw a deep, long sHt in the rock, rising 
from the up-stream end of his tunnel to a stately 
building. In the building were generators carried 
on top of vertical shafts which were caused to 
rotate by turbines at their lower ends down in the 
bottom of that long, deep slit in the rock. All 
this and more the imaginative faculty in engineering 
revealed to that engineer, and the engineer made 
it plain to men with money that the sublimation 
of his vision would make their money earn more 
of its kind; and to-day you may look upon the 
completed work of the Electrical Development 
Company and know that it is there because of the 
imaginative faculty in engineering. 

Another engineer explores the canyon of a river. 
The walls here are not far apart, and an idea, a 
vision, comes to the engineer. That river at 
times is a torrent; the rains have descended and 
the floods have come and the river rushes on, a 
destructive agency, leaving a land behind perishing 
of thirst. The engineer asks himself, "To what 
purpose is this waste?" And again, "Why should 
not this waste be prevented.^" And the answer 
comes, "It can be, and you can do it." Then he 
sees the way. He will hold the pass against the 
oncoming waters. The imaginative faculty is at 
work, and shows him that deep down beneath 
the stream are footings sure and steadfast on which 
he can found a dam; this dam he can anchor into 



IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN ENGINEERING 177 

the granite banks of the stream. That was a 
revelation; to-day it is a reahty. The Arrow 
Rock Dam rises 351 feet above its base, and the 
waters rush against it; they stop and swell and 
press, but the dam is stronger than the pressure. 
The floods have lost their freedom, the waste of 
waters has been stopped after untold ages, and 
to-day they are gathered and sent to make gardens 
in the desert; and, like Samson of old, they must 
grind in their prison house and give off power which 
will do man's work and hght man's dwelHngs. 
The voice that spake to Moses speaks to the 
engineer to-day: "And look that thou make them 
after the pattern that was shown thee in the mount." 



XIV 

ENGINEERING AND ART 

On the Value of the Scientific Use of the 

Imagination 

JULIAN CHASE SMALLWOOD 

[As Alfred Senier indicates in his address, the creative pro- 
cesses of the engineer are not unlike those of the man of 
letters. For this reason the study of literature has long been 
regarded as of the utmost value in the development of the 
imagination. Nowhere, possibly, has its importance been set 
forth more pleasantly than in the following essay by Professor 
Smallwood, which is reprinted, by permission of the author, from 
Gassier s Magazine, January, 1910. Julian Chase Smallwood 
(188 1- ) is a graduate of Columbia University and of the 
Johns Hopkins University, and has taught in Columbia Uni- 
versity, in the George Washington University, in the University 
of Pennsylvania, in Syracuse University, and in the Johns 
Hopkins University, where he is connected with the Depart- 
ment of Mechanical Engineering. He is the author of many 
technical treatises and articles on original devices and methods, 
especially in laboratory practice, and of various essays on the 
problems of engineering education.] 

In this age of industry and greed we are all 
liberally tarred with the stick of commercialism. 
It tinctures our acts and judgments, and all but 
blinds us to the fact that we have time for any- 

178 



ENGINEERING AND ART 179 

thing but trade. Literature is closed to us. On 
the rare occasions when the successful business 
man surrenders himself to the opera or art gallery, 
he consoles himself with the reflection that his 
social advancement may be converted into dollars 
and cents, and that thus his time may not be 
wholly lost. Sometimes he makes art his hobby, 
and then his valuation of the beautiful is based 
upon the existing amount of it and the prominence 
given to him if he secures it. But there is not, 
and never can be, thinks he, any direct connection 
between art and money-getting. 

If this is true of those engaged in trade, is it 
not more or less true of engineers, whose vocation 
is, it has been said, to make one dollar do the work 
of two.^ I can imagine someone answering, "My 
part in life is economic production; it is another's 
part to paint pictures, to compose music, or to make 
poetry. Should I depart from my way to dabble 
in work which is not mine, especially as the out- 
come only furnishes the relaxation which may be 
pleasant to others but not to me? My relaxation 
is the pursuit of science; what will art avail me?" 
Doubtless this view is typical of engineers who 
are truly enthusiastic in their work. Aside from 
this singleness of interest, the very nature of engi- 
neering inclines us tov\^ard the mundane. We who 
are practicing our profession have it forced upon 
us from start to finish that the dollar is the 
most potent factor in the denominator of all frac- 



180 JULIAN CHASE SMALLWOOD 

tions expressing efficiency. Our sensibilities are 
burdened beyond their strength with this weight 
of the dollar. It is not our business to build an 
engine that will deliver the highest horse power 
hours per pound of steam, but to construct one to 
yield the maximum work for the dollar expended. 
The goddess Efficiency sinks into insignificance 
beside the glory of her sistet Economy. None 
disputes that Economy has superior charms, and 
is worthy of the worship accorded her. The fault 
lies in us rather than in her, that we cannot pay her 
homage without being dazzled by her brilliance. 
And thus we lose sight of the fact that there are 
other goddesses the worship of whom is merited and 
wise. So the engineer asks in his simphcity, *^0f 
■what avail is art to me?" 

I can imagine you, busy man of science, turning 
over the page with a sneer, saying, "Art and en- 
gineering — yes, Kipling has coupled them; but I 
cannot see that engineering is any the better for 
it." Have you ever reflected upon the talents of 
that friend of story lovers, F. Hopkinson Smith, 
who was at once a novelist, a painter, and an en- 
gineer? Have you ever thought of that master 
of English letters who could produce "The Raven" 
in spite of one of the keenest mathematical minds 
of his generation? Have you ever been informed 
that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a brilliant writer 
and lecturer on mathematics, has furnished a pleasure 
to your children which you have never given them, 



ENGINEERING AND ART 181 

and will do so to generations of little ones to come, 
by his creation of Alice in Wonderland'^. Do 
you remember reading in your schoolboy history 
about Benjamin Franklin, whose homely inventions 
and tremendous scientific discoveries live and are 
useful to-day, side by side with his Poor Richard's 
Almanac? You know of his illustrious name in 
science. Do you know of his achievements in letters ? 
Consider these famous men and many more like 
them; then ask yourself, "Is there any tangible 
connection between art and science?'' "Doubt- 
less," you will say, "a man may have artistic as 
well as scientific accomplishments." I reply that 
these men were better scientists because they were 
artists, and that you will be if you cultivate any- 
thing that may be artistic in you. The magnificent 
City of Engineering has a broad road traversing it 
and leading into the beautiful Country of Art — 
the Road of Imagination. If we labor on without 
following this road, we are as children of the alleys 
who do not know the inspiring sunshine. 

Men of science, your faculties are weakened by 
the exactitude which is your pride. You measure 
and weigh, and you are surrounded and overwhelmed 
by the limitations imposed by the experiences 
of your senses. You are too material. If you 
had been Newton observing the apple fall, you 
would have thought, "The reason why it fell was 
because its stem became too weak to hold it." 
Newton, however, had an imagination, and thereby 



182 JULIAN CHASE SMALLWOOD 

he discovered the law of gravitation. And so it 
is with name after name in history, and so it will 
be with you and me. We may achieve some small 
measure of success by doing what our fathers did 
before us, but our really great deeds will be offspring 
of our imaginations. Sometimes we see an in- 
vention accomplished by chance, or a benefit opened 
to mankind by a stumbling footstep. Such are rare; 
and shiftless we should be did we count upon 
accidents for success. 

Does it not become apparent that without the 
stimulus of imagination science becomes as un- 
productive as a tree which puts forth only leaves 
when it should bear fruit ? I would put it even more 
strongly. Science is but a servant of the imagina- 
tion. Euclid built his geometry theorem upon 
theorem, and his science served his imagination to 
create a new structure. The delightful imagination 
that conceived Alice in Wonderland was the attribute 
that made the scientist in its author capable of 
grasping that zero divided by zero equals a finite 
quantity. And no one can deal with mathematics 
understandingly who does not allow this quality 
of his mind full play. When we deal with infinity 
in the science of generic members; when we speak 
of lines of force in electricity; when we consider 
atoms in chemistry or entropy in thermodynamics^ 
we step at once into the domain of imagination. 
The sense cannot grasp these things. How, then, 
can we even remotely conceive them without 



ENGINEERING AND ART 183 



employing the imagination? Have you ever stopped 
to think of what audacious conceptions your daily 
work is based upon? What a fanciful thing is a 
logarithm! obtained by multiplying a number by 
itself a fractional number of times. What a com- 
monplace figure is tt, and yet how absolutely im- 
possible to grasp! How wonderful that the calculus 
enables us to obtain in one minute a result whose 
arithmetical computation would last for infinity! 
If you use these things without reflecting upon the 
wonder of them, you will be as a man who guides 
an automaton that turns bone into buttons, and 
takes interest in naught but the raw material and 
the product. Should he, however, possess that 
ability which I am disposed to exalt, it would lead 
him to consider thus: "The steps in this trans- 
formation are as I see them. If this step should 
be omitted, and that one combined with another, 
what a saving there would be! Th6 machine will 
do more work in a given time, will be simpler, 
and will, therefore, cost less. Perhaps I can accom- 
plish it." And here his mind may finish the imag- 
inative work it has begun. Franklin did but this 
vhen he first conceived and then proved the identity 
of lightning and electricity. 

We are all born with some of this divine fire of 
imagination. We see it in children; but, alas! 
it too often sinks into desuetude with the passage 
of childhood. Can you give it new life? Un- 
doubtedly. No matter what your years, nor how 



184 JULIAN CHASE SMALLWOOD 

mundane have become your views of life and work, 
you still have the power of developing it. The 
phenomenon is of daily occurrence. A new interest, 
a new hope or faith, kindles the fire, and we again 
live in the realm of imagination — for a time. We 
can always, with the will, cause this spark to flame. 
And I think that that which is most conducive to 
its development is a lively appreciation of liter- 
ature, an appreciation which may be acquired by 
anyone whose intelligence entitles him to the name 
of engineer. Books are ever ready and ever faithful 
friends. When I think of the thousands who have 
been, and will be, intellectually nourished, as well 
as entertained, and, therefore, strengthened for 
their work by such a man as Thackeray, I feel that 
he and such as he are among the first benefactors 
of the human race. Do not turn away from them, 
saying that you have no time for such pastimes. 
You have time for anything that you earnestly 
want to do. Want to do this. Do not deprive 
your imaginations of such a stimulus. If you 
read a poem such as "The Ancient Mariner," 
picture after picture will flash before your mind; 
the wonder of Coleridge's words is that they cause 
this active working of the imagination. Such a 
mental exercise cannot fail to make vigorous that 
attribute of the mind, no matter how dormant, 
which is so essential to a broadening of our scope 
of usefulness. 

I have sought to point out that the engineer's 



ENGINEERING AND ART 185 

inclinations and vocation cause him to ignore the 
creations generalized under the name of art; that 
such ignorance deprives him not only of a vast 
pleasure, but a positive benefit; and that he actually 
needs this benefit in his daily work. If it is acknowl- 
edged that imagination is essential to science, the 
appreciation of it will result in a new perception, 
a new perspective, and a range at present beyond 
his ken. His conceptions of the real combined with 
the unreal will be the embryo of ideal fulfillment. 
And these selective and constructive conceptions 
will be born of the only mother who can bear them, 
whom perhaps he, with others, has scorned — the 
mother Imagination. 



The End 




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